Originally Posted by N.Stocks 
But with just organizing them according to date, means that you will always need to search using the search tool, as you won't be able to remember that a particular photo was taken on March 25th 2006...
True enough. Is there a problem with using a search tool? That seems similar to saying "if the only way you can start your car is with a key, you will always need a key to start the car". OK, but so what? Is there a problem with using a key?
BTW, the gold standard reference for organization of digital images is "The DAM Book" by Peter Krogh, now in a second edition that I just heard about last week and plan to pick up today or tomorrow. He recommends archiving by date to make backup simple (once a fodler is backed up, is is never changed), but making heavy use of keywords, ratings, and other metadata facilities to make it easy to find your images. I typically spend maybe 10 minutes per cardful of image adding keywords and so forth, and I consider that time well spent.