category list with posts

Hi
i need to list in my homepage some category and for each of them to list the first 10 posts, for the first category the layout must be a little different, like this:
category 1 -> 10 posts (with title and an image)
category 2 (and 3,4,5) -> 10 posts (only with title)

For the moment i did it with 5 query_posts, resetting it at the end of each loop.
Do you think is this the right way? or maybe is there any other more convenient way of doing it? Or the only alternative is to use a plugin?

Thanks
Vitto