I find that the best system for me is to keep kits together. I have folders with the major shops that I visit, and then subfolders for each designer. Under each designer I have kits separated by kit. I used to separate by item type and colors too but I found it took way too long to find coordinating items and then it took forever to refind things to credit, that I changed to this system which works perfectly for me.
I also have ACDSee, but I never tagged anything, and I have had it almost a year. It takes a long time to tag all your stuff. If you are just beginning, then I would say go for it, but my system seems to work for me and I rarely ever need an item so badly that I wish I had tags. Now, mind you I have a good memory for my items, so others may not. I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, but I can pretty much tell you where any little scrap item is on my hard drive... go figure!
If you progress into this addiction farther and eventually end up on Creative Teams, you will want to keep your kits and designers together, since you will using their stuff exclusively on layouts. I had also found that when I wanted to do challenges at various scrap sites, that I had a hard time finding that site's designers to use their products on their challenges (some sites require that), which led me to my current system, which makes that task simple.
My scrap folder looks something like this:
And yes I know not all those designers are still at SM. Eventually I move designers to their new shops. And if a designer sells at more then one shop, I keep all their stuff together and put it under the site I use them most frequently.
