On Windows the good old "Windows Live Photo Gallery" program that come with Vista (and is available for Win 7+ as download), is still a good alternative. The good thing it doesn't force one to use a database based album system. The photo files stay were the are, it only reads/extracts the metadata and optionally the user tags can be embedded back to the original file.
Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery
Download: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/photo-galler...
Edit: the offline-installer is hidden on this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials-i...