Greetings all!
Its been awhile since I've sought the sage wisdom here at DVinfo. I recently add the Vixia S100 to my arsenal. I was tiring of the piles of miniDV tapes that my GL2 was stacking up so I figured what better way to eliminate that than one of these new fangled AVCHD cams.

Boy was I wrong! My laptop PC which is a basic Dell Vostro 1510 is not even close to the horsepower I will need to edit/store video. I couldn't even get it to recognize my camera for some time. When I finally got some files to transfer I was presented with .mts files that I cant do squat with.

Anyway, back to my question. What do I need to buy to get my clips edited and uploaded to to youtube or to DVD etc.
Clueless on the Laptop choice. Dont want to break the bank if possible, but want the thing to work effortlessly if thats possible.
Was thinking VEGAS software.
Any thing else I need?
Whats the deal with the mini-HDMI cable I see mentioned in my searches?
Remember you are talking to a complete newbie here when it comes to AVCHD editing.
Thanks for the patience.
Chris

Probably all you need is neoscene from Cineform, (Cineform (http://www.cineform.com/)) it will convert mts to avi and any video editor will be able to cut that with no problem;
you probably won't have to upgrade your PC/laptop either , AVCHD is a very heavy codec, same footage converted with neoscene to AVI digestable by average configuration PC,
if you want to watch your videos straight from the camera on TV mini HDMI cable is the best choice, ebay has them starting from $10

Your laptop can easily handle HD video, just not in AVCHD. I'm not sure what you're using for editing now, but probably the easiest solution would be to get one of the popular consumer budget NLEs (non-linear editors), such as Adobe Premiere Elements, Sony Vegas or Pinnacle Studio. THey are all under $100.

I agree that Cineform's NeoScene makes it much easier to edit HD. Keep in mind, though; NeoScene creates very large files. Your original 160GB drive would probably be useless for this. I would suggest spending another $100 or so for an external fast USB2 hard drive (500GB or so), which would provide plenty of space for the temporary HD files needed for editing.

Since you have a HD camcorder, you probably don't want to create standard-definition DVDs; instead, you'd want to burn Blu-ray discs. Premiere Elements can do this for you, just like the other software titles in the same category. You'll be able to create Blu-ray compatible Hi-def discs on ordinary DVD-Rs (about 30 mins on standard disc, 1 hour on dual-layer DVD-R). That way, you don't have to buy a Blu-ray burner (not to mention $7 Blu-ray BD-R discs). If you still need to down-convert and create old-fashioned standard-def DVDs, you can also do it in Premiere (or the others).