John, for the purpose of quick review and deletion of obvious rejects, you'll probably find Adobe Bridge much more useful, if you have it. If not, something like FastRAwViewer or the free Faststone Image Viewer are good alternatives.
Just to point out: during the LR Import process, there is the opportunity to accept or refuse particular images. I find the previewing involved in this is fairly fast (since it just extracts a thumbnail, and does not need to generate anything afresh). If this is done directly from the camera card, then the refused images will not get copied into the computer at all.
LR can take care of filing the images in the computer to a preferred system - with zero, some or full user involvement each time. So that's file management, initial triage and physical organisation all rolled together into one operation. I import with almost zero input from me, only ensuring a particular Import preset is selected and some common keywords entered for the batch. One could type a specific folder name here too, if desired.
There is also of course, the opportunity to have images present in the computer, but not imported into the LR Catalog. LR's idea is to selectively show all the images that YOU consider to form part of a useful working library, but not present all the incidental ones (such as exported versions, rejected images etc).
That selectivity means that less effort has to be expended on micro-managing the filing arrangements, in order to maintain control and keep track of what is what. With something like Bridge, you more or less have to exert continual vigilance over what is put where and named what. With LR + PS, I have a hands-free import and editing process where I never have to think about that. Only Exports need a little thought as to where things should be put; I use a separate filing structure for those, distinct from the originals and working files, so the possibility of conflict is zero. The originals and the PS working files constitute a "black box" under the full control of LR, and that area of storage Just Works all by itself. If I want to find something, LR takes me straight to it. When a database is the front end - not the file system - all kinds of virtual aids to the search become possible.
