Organizing for Mac digi scrappers

I've spent the last few days researching, hemming and hawing about how to organize my digital products. There are 4 consumer options* for Mac users and I tried them all before settling on my final solution. Here are my personal impressions, but I would encourage you to test them out for yourself:

Apple OS X Finder with Spotlight (free with OS X Tiger or Leopard)
So I started with the easiest and cheapest - just using folders on my external FireWire drive and having OS X show me previews. Kathy at DigiScrapMac had a blog post showing how she used it, so I followed her structure of creating designer folders. In the end, I stopped doing this because I couldn't browse by type, just by kit/designer.
Pros: easy to keep kits together by designer, free!
Cons: can't tag products, OS X doesn't create a preview for all file formats (with Tiger I had to use 3rd party software to create the previews, which was an extra step).

Adobe Bridge 2 (free with CS3 or PE6)
Bridge is a cool option, because it interacts so nicely with the other Adobe products. You can tag (note: Bridge 2 can tag PNGs, older versions can't) individual files for sorting, and easily open them in PS or PE6. I loaded about 800 items in an dstarted tagging. Bridge had the nicest system for finding files on your various drives, and the tagging window was easy to use.
Pros: easy tagging, can have files anywhere
Cons: sloooow creating and displaying previews when files are on an external drive. Scrolling through took me forever.

Shoebox by Kavasoft ($30-80)
Jessica Sprague offers a class on organzing with Shoebox, and there is a tutorial on how to organize with it at DigiScrapInfo. I tested Bridge and Shoebox simultaneously, and was happy to see that Shoebox kept up alot better. But once I hit about 1,000 items in Shoebox, it started to drag. And when I closed and reopened the program, it had to redraw all the previews, which was taking forever on just 1,000 items (only a fraction of what I have so far) .
Pros: moderately easy tagging (Bridge was slicker), can keep files anywhere.
Cons: Very slow when files are on an external drive. Can't move files once they are tagged, or Shoebox can't find them. Navigation process a little odd. And the $30 Lite version only allows 10,000 items, so most digi scrappers will need the $80 Pro version.

iPhoto 08 (free with a new Mac, $80 upgrade for older Macs)
Although I recently upgraded to iPhoto 08, and happily use it to organize and do basic editing on my digital photos, quite a few digi scrappers pooh-poohed it for digi organization. And I didn't want to mix my elements and my photo, so I used this as my last resort. I was pleasantly surprised, that with a few tweaks, iPhoto 08 works nicely. I wouldn't try this with iPhoto 6 or earlier - the Events feature in iPhoto is what really makes this work.
Pros: tagging is extremely simple, it can handle tens of thousands of items, Events view is perfect for viewing previews, easily open items in PE6.
Cons: runs somewhat slow off external drive, iPhoto has to import the elements into its own database/file structure, can't keep TOU doc/text files with the kits.

So after a week of testing, I am imported and tagging all my items into iPhoto 08. I still have lots to go, and I'm refining my tag sstems and folders as I go. Once I reach critical mass, I'll do a later post showing my organization, with screenshots.

*I didn't test Adobe's Lightroom ($300) or Apple's Aperture ($200). They are both Pro level organizers and out of most digi scrappers price range.