This has been a very valuable thread. I am in exactly the same position as DanLoc78 having now wrapped round the counter on my K100d! I also have images from my P&S cameras and indeed am starting to scan in the slides/prints from my old ME.
I've been looking at several cataloging systems and databases. Many systems do not understand RAW so they are automatically rejected (I shoot everything in RAW - it keeps the highest quality image on disk). I tried Photoshop Elements, gave up because it has no easy way to view/access photos outside of Elements and no easy way to put photos on a server and view from client computers. I tried Picasa, but despite its useability, it seemed tedious to do the tagging and again, access the photo database outside of Picasa.
Best I've found (and it's still far from perfect) is F-Spot Photo Manager (linux) which uses an SQL-type database to store the tags etc. This is good, as you can access the database outside of F-Spot, but is linux only.
Having tried these I am now thinking through the strategy, as I think - as others do on this thread - that this is the critical point to start from. Everybody will have different criteria, so it is unlikely that one tool will satisfy everyone. nevertheless, it is worth sharing these - and tools - so we can all benefit.
Photo management tool review database anyone?