Kharen,
What you like about your Pantene conditioners may be the reason why you are hating the more natural ones: silicones.
Conditioners like Pantene, Garnier Fructis (which I personally love), have syrupy polymers called silicones that wrap your around hair, much like saran wrap does for foods.
The 'silky' feeling you get, as well as the much sought-after 'slip-factor' (easily sliding a comb through your hair), is from silicones. Silicones can help mend weak parts of your hair by forming a kind of a glue to fortify weak spots. Unfortunately, a lot of non-soluble silicones stay in your hair unless you use a clarifying shampoo.
Why is this bad?
The silicones actually wrap around your hair so well that moisture does not get into your hair shaft. So when you use a clarifying shampoo, do a baking soda rinse, or try other kinds of conditioners, you may be taking the existing silicones out of your hair and revealing the kind of hair you may have right now: dry hair, rough hair, and in some spots, brittle hair.
The best way to get rid of the dry brittle hair is to get the ends trimmed and start afresh with non-silicone conditioners. Silicones are easy to find because the end in a '-cone' or '-one'. The NaturallyCurly website tells you what silicones are water soluble (rinse away cleanly with water, which is better for your hair than non-soluble ones) versus ones that are non-soluble.
Silicones make your hair look good in the short run, but may dry your hair out in the long run. You may even find that when you quit using a silicone based conditioner like Pantene that some of your hair had peices glued to each other, split ends and all - which is a scary sight.
Having truly healthy hair, not just hair that is coated with something to make it look artificially healthy (which is fine for special occasions, but it's a lot nicer to have true healthy hair, right?), involves gentle care - no towel rubbing, little tugging, minimal comb/brush breakage, handling hair gently when wet, and using products that don't strip, damage, dry out, or break your hair.
So, the point of all this is - the conditioners you may be using instead of your usual Pantene do not have silicones in it. You may need to get rid of the silicones, get a trim, use gentler products, and then you'll be a lot happier with using more natural conditioners when your hair isn't stripped/dried out on the cuticle layer.
The people in this forum like the baking soda and vinegar rinses simply because baking soda has a close to neutral pH, as opposed to regular shampoo, and doesn't overstrip hair or damage it (unless you don't get the pH back down with an acid), and vinegar closes the cuticle, makes hair shiny, and provides enough 'slip' so that you can run a comb through your hair without tangles. Some people supplement their vinegar rinses with the use of essential oils and hair friendly oils like jojoba, coconut, olive oil, and others.
You may also opt to use silicone free conditioners. Oddly, some of the cheaper conditioners don't have silicones and may actually be better for your hair than the silicone soupy conditioners. Most of the Suave Naturals are silicone free - you can find an entire list of good conditioners to buy that are silicone free on NaturallyCurly.com. NaturallyCurly swears off silicone products because they dry out curly hair and ends up in breakage, which makes it difficult to grow hair long. If that doesn't seem appealing, you can try to get a conditioner that has water-soluble silicones only, which rinse cleanly from the hair and doesn't contribute as much to hair dryness and breakage as non-soluble ones do.
http://naturallycurly2.com/phpBB/vie...=cones+removal
You mentioned current breakage in your hair - I'm betting it's from your conditioner. It's a vicious cycle of mending hair with silicones, drying it out, breaking, and conditioning.
I hope this helps.