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I'm a big fan of red-dot finders - they are so handy to get a good fix on any naked eye target (but limited use for finding fainter targets, of course). I find them especially handy when your target is high in the sky, and you need to crook your head into some weird gymnastics to get to the eyepiece of a conventional finder-scope. (90-degree finder-scopes can be a big help here!) With a red-dot, it's much easier to see the alignment dot without needing to be perfectly aligned with the eyepiece of a conventional finder, and it's very easy to see which way you need to move, because you area aligning against the full sky-view.
I use a couple of Go-To mounts (1 x Celestron SLT, 1 x Celestron SE), so the red-dot finder is mainly used to get my 3 initial alignment stars, and then I can turn it off and use the Go-To function for everything else. I just use the really cheap basic red-dot finders that you can get for $30 or so on eBay - these don't have any ranging rings or a reticule that you find on a Telrad, which can be handy if you want to use the red-dot finder for star-hopping to find the fainter targets, but work perfectly well for aligning to visible targets.
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