Im still using a standard folder structure TBH.
The reason for this is that I store photos on my network drive (minimax connected to Airport Extreme), so that I can access them over my wireless throughout the house. (Dont worry, its backed up onto a seperate RAID drive as well!)
I dont want to try connecting to a large database file via iPhoto or Aperture over the wireless as I think it would be painfully slow!
I do have iPhoto 11 installed, but only really use it if I want to create a photobook. I import the images I need into a database I'll create on my firewire HDD, create my photobook, then clear everything out again!
I dont do much when it comes to editing images etc. I guess I could leave photos on my network drive, then use iPhoto or Aperture when Im at the desk via a connected HDD. But since I dont do much with them other then go down memory lane every now and then, is there much Im missing out on?
The way that LR works may make it painless to keep the images where they are. Aperture users would have to chime in if Aperture works the same way.
LR doesn't touch your original images, it creates a 'Catalogue' to store information about the images - a data base, in other words. The Catalogue can reside anywhere, and does not need to be housed with the images.
The Catalogue stores everything you do to the images, and I believe the previews are also with the catalogue, iirc. You can work with the Catalogue even if the drive with the images is off-line. You can't do image editing (afaik) since you only have the previews to work with, but you can do all of the organizing, flagging, key-wording, rating, etc since those tasks only need access to the previews and Catalogue.
So, you could do the organizing bits on a laptop while sitting on deck with a brew, and then do the colour correction work in a proper light controlled work area on a computer with a calibrated monitor hooked up to the drive with the images.
What you miss by not using a program like LR or Aperture is the ability to organize your photos by metadata. iPhoto sort of has it with Albums and keywords, but it is a very constrained feature set. If you don't have too many images now, you may not miss these features - but as your library grows your memory will not be enough. However, with LR and Aperture you really need to keep on top of the key-wording to take advantage of them. It's not hard to do... and there is some really good articles on the web about the techniques and philosophy of key-wording.
Because LR by default wants to organize images by year/month/day (a file structure you can choose to hide or display) it's easy to browse that way. Or you can browse key-words. I like to occasionally go down the keyword list and explore words I had forgotten I had added.
