Shadow maps techniques

Heh stencil shadow volumes are really slow for complex objects (shadow volumes for skinned models are just foolish).  Therefore, I tried to implement shadow-mapping technique – it is easy, fast and looks good. The one of the complicated thing is omni directional lights shadow mapping. The perspective shadow mapping is used only for spot lights and it is unsuitable for omni lights.  There are few solutions for the way out: cube map shadowing (6 rendering passes and without depth values – non-self shadowing), and dual paraboloid shadow mapping. Firstly, I implemented cube map shadows with smooth the edges. Now I realized that cube map is too much expensive, and that dual paraboloid required only 2 rendering passes with 2-texture unit. Additionally I have been reading that: “…a Sphere and paraboloid maps uses only 78% of the actual texture resolution available in the texture map image…” and that dual paraboloid shadow maps cause unprofitable results. So I am a little bit confused now, which way is better?