I've never been interested in camcorders until I found out how to use the video option on my FujiFilm 4MP digital camera (finepix something) and learned how to use Windows Movie Maker to edit the videos and upload them to YouTube.

I'd like a primer on the latest and greatest camcorders. What brands to look for, what brands to avoid, which features are really good, etc...

I'm guessing that I'll need to find something with a 10-20GB storage device for 2-6 hours of recording?

Should I just look at getting a Canon EOS instead?

I'd like it to be digital so I can transfer it directly to my laptop (USB 2.0 or 1394) and edit it.

btt

I think we just had a thread on this, did you search?  In a nutshell here is the breakdown:

HDD cameras: no removable media, so its a pain in the ass for vacations when you might not have time for downloading the video to a computer all the time.  Otherwise good cameras

MiniDV:  The standard format, a ton of selection from every manufacturer, the tapes are cheap and available everywhere, it is a digital format so you can get them in HD, 16:9, etc.  I would recommend an HD 3 ccd camera personally, but they are $$.
 
Direct to DVD cameras:  Cheap junk for the most part, lack features, and if you give them a good bump while recording they will glitch and screw up (true with the HDD cameras as well, rotating mass is not as tough as tape).  Only hold 30 minutes at most on the expensive little DVDs.  Great for grandmas that have no clue what firewire is.  You have to rip the dvd (which is in some weird format) just like a normal one to do video editing, pain in the ass.  

I would get a high end MiniDV camera if I was shopping today, I have a top of the line Sony from a few years ago and it works really well still.  

In the same time it takes to download an hour of video from a miniDV camera to your computer I can pull the video off of my HDD -based Sony DCR-SR100, edit it and burn it to DVD (or whatever the target media is). But it is true that I can only get 7 hours of recording time at the highest quality before I would need to pull video off the camera for more space.

I did browse through Crutchfield and found the MiniDV to be a fairly versatile format.
How do I transfer it onto PC? Do I need special software to convert the A/V signal into a digital format? I normally use Windows Movie Maker to edit my clips (hey, it's free!) and I have a firewire jack on my laptop, but it does not have any composite inputs.

Why aren't the HD's based on the compact flash / smart drive format or at least a laptop HD? They usually take quite a pounding before anything bad happens (at least on a laptop).

To transfer the video from the miniDV to the computer you plug into a IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 port (depending on the model) and then basically play back the video to the computer.  You can do that from within either the software that is provided with the camera or from WMM.  You select the format you want to save the video in; the higher the quality, the bigger the file (IIRC, 20 minutes of AVI = ~ 4GB).

There are video cameras that can use SD RAM for storage. They are limited to the size of the memory card whic his an issue if you want to make longer videos.

I really know jack about this stuff, but 4 gigs for 20 minutes sounds a bit high.  Don't DVD's hold a few hours of good video on 5 gigs?

Quoted: I really know jack about this stuff, but 4 gigs for 20 minutes sounds a bit high.  Don't DVD's hold a few hours of good video on 5 gigs?

The DVD movies you buy are compressed using MPEG2 codecs (did I say it right?). Compression makes all the difference (AVI, MPG, MOV are compressed formats).

I have a Sony MiniDV handycam.. Love it..

One of the overlooked features of most quality Handycams is the AV inputs...

You can use these AV inputs to Rip TV shows and VHS tapes to your computer..