Here is a great how to walkthrough from gbhil of androidcentral, the mind behind the gumbo rom. This is what I used for my rooting experience and is quite intuitive to follow. The only stumbling block you may run into is getting the htc drivers installed properly on your machine, specially 64bit windows. But that should be covered as well from another link on this page for the sdk software.
Like others have said, in the end it is much easier to flash custom roms and the ability to snapshot what you currently have in the case of the infamous "oh sh*t" moment we all encounter when experimenting with what works and what doesn't.
http://forum.androidcentral.com/htc-...d-version.html
EDIT: this is pretty similar to the process detailed in the xda post, but between the two you should have no problems and at the end of the day you'll become an insta pro filled with confidence and what not.....kinda like those Enzyte commercials :P