Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - Need help with selecting Water Softener

I am pretty much set on purchasing GE Pro-Elite water softener based on few threads here. I keep thinking about Ionics/Puronics. GE bought Ionics and kept the commercial water treatment products and dumped the consumer products. Now the consumer products are called puronics. I was talking to a GE sales person about the puronics products, he claims that puronics uses Silver to treat the water and it is not good for health and hence they dumped the consumer product group. Is that really true? What are the side effects of Silver?

Some articles say that water softener removes calcium from the water (which is true) as a result consumer will not get enough calcium (if the water is used for drinking and cooking). Do you recommend using Calcium supplements or are they any products out there which will retain correct amount of Calcium in the water?

Some articles say RO systems do more bad than good if they are used for drinking and cooking. It is hard for me to believe. Is that true?

I appreciate your time and responses