Your take on ExMerge vs OLK Archive for old mailboxes/former employees

(note: I'm on Exch2k3 SP2, so no Mailbox-Import/Export cmdlets for me.)
My personal policy is to archive all employee mail as an "employee exit" process. Is there a benefit to using ExMerge vs giving myself rights to the mailbox, mounting in Outlook, archiving from the client to .pst before deleting their AD account?
I know how robust ExMerge is, but from the perspective of just brick-level "junking" a mailbox it seems it's a slower process than archiving and at a glance makes Exchange work a little bit more than running from a client. Is there additional benefit to one over the other in how it affects the overall .edb or .stm files? From my perspective they both do what I want - email retention, mailbox removal, and additional space on server - and are just personal preference.