Am I correct?

Yes and no (with a liberal sprinkling of "depend"s and "maybe"s).

The good thing about Strawberry Perl is that it gives you all the components you need to compile modules in one simple download. You can get the same mileage out of ActiveState, but you first need some separate downloads and a bit of fiddling to get things configured right.

If there really is no PPM available for the particular module you need, then that's a good indication that the module you need probably won't build on Windows (even with Strawberry Perl). Installing Strawberry Perl is the first step in finding that out. I encourage you to take that step.

Cheers,
Rob