first post full (the_content) and the rest excerpt

hi, on my homepage i display the last 10 posts, like on most blogs.. i use the_excerpt() just to show the beginning of the post. That’s OK, but for a homepage, visually it’s not OK.. the homepage only shows text (the excerpts, and images are trimmed) which makes the page unattractive. So i was thinking, maybe i could show the WHOLE POST (with picture!!) just for the first post, and the other 9 posts remain the excerpt.

first (latest) post: the_content
all the rest: the_excerpt

is there any way to do this? what do you think of this setup?