I almost always use an external card reader such as the Sandisk 8-in-1 Card Reader to transfer my pictures to my computer. It's quick and easy. However, it's a little more difficult when it comes to organizing my pictures. Specifically,

• What directory structure to use,
• What to name the folders that hold the pictures, and
• What to name the pictures themselves?

I'm pretty cheap when it comes to this sort of thing, so I didn't want to spend any money on software to organize my pictures and since I wanted them to display on my TV through the Media Center PC, for convenience, I needed to place them in the "My Pictures" directory.

After much thought, I've settled on the following standards.

For the directory structure:

1) The first directory is the year, e.g. 2005
2) The second directory under year is the month, unless it's a special occasion, e.g. Zac's wedding, then that takes precedence.
3) The only time I go any further than that is if I modify a picture in any way, I keep a copy of the original around in an "original" directory beneath the second directory. I might do this if I shrink the size of it, touch it up, or crop out what I don't like.

For naming standards of the pictures:

I just keep the file names as they come off the camera, e.g. IMG000001. I've decided that trying to change every picture's name is not only tedious and time consuming, it is also very difficult to select a unique name for pictures that are similar to each other. In the end, I just gave up.

Fairly simple and straightforward and it keeps them pretty well organized. Would love to hear other options and if anyone is successfully using freeware for the PC for organizing their pictures.