Best way to Transfer P2 data from Panasonic Camera

We currently use an Avid Media Composer 6 and a Panasonic P2 Camera for all of our recording in our studio. I finished recording 2.5 hours of Green Screen footage yesterday and am consolidating everything onto our Avid. Before we had our Avid, I would just copy over the footage to our main HD Tower and do whatever I needed to do with it when I was ready. But, since we purchased our Avid, Avid ostensibly makes a copy of the .mxf files and copies it to their drive in their format.

I've started consolidating the video directly from the P2 Camera and I've come to realize consolidating the footage is a HUGE bottle neck. So I've been looking for external readers and they range in price from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars. One readers on USB2, one on USB3 and one on Firewire. The camera runs at Firewire 400 so a USB connection will be slower.

So I ask the community:
• What external card reader do you use?
• Do you roll footage off to a hard drive prior to importing?
• Should I copy the footage to our tower and go about business as usual?

Any advice/suggestions would be great...

Thanks,
Ted