now --- i havent read all the replies to your question but ... my thinking is: it's better to study where all the notes are on your guitar...once you know that you only have to know which notes belong to a certain scale...and you can make up your own patterns easily.
that way you only have to know the 5 or 7 notes that belong to a scale...and there you go. every time you wanna learn a new scale youll only have to memorize those 5-7 notes!
the other way round you'll have to study thousands of patterns ... without really knowing what youre doing there. :)
when i started playing guitar i also got me a bad ass scale book with all kinds of patterns...but i could never figure out how you are supposed to study them all ... now that i picked my guitar up again after a couple of years doing electronic music ... i realized that even tho its a tedious job - once you know where all the notes are on your fretboard it can only help you. and not just for scales ... you also see different voicings for chords all over the fretboard ...
hope this helps :)
ike