Lightroom is an amazing tool, I use it to manage my quickly growing collection of photos. I have to say though that I don't think it's organisational skills are the best, compare it to something like iPhoto and for most consumers that has a much better interface and is much more user friendly.

Lightroom forms part of my structured workflow, and as an image tool it does some really amazing things, the new noise reduction and lens correction features are simply amazing. LR takes hours and hours off my workflow, but I work with large volumes of pictures maybe 1500 at a time, this is what it is designed to do, not catalogue a family photo collection. Although it can do this of course.

I'd look at all the options and find the best one for you, you've made a good choice to start off with but it may not be the right one for you.

Cheers

Cris