I remember a year or so ago I was told not to get an hdd video camera because the format would not drag and drop into any of the video editing programs. Is this still true?

I have about 30 minidv tapes sitting around doing nothing because everytime I need to grab a clip I have to go through a HUGE ordeal of finding it and ripping it to the computer in real time. With the price of hard drives I'd much rather just archive everything to the pc from a HDD camcorder. But if the format needs conversion or is difficult to edit, then I guess I'll just stick with my miniDV for now.

The camera i'm looking at is a jvc everio for about 600$ used.
Is that one good to drag and drop edit like I want to do?
Can you recommend some others under 600$ to look at?
Can you reccomend some to stay away from?

I guess after reading some more, the problem used to be that hdd camcorders record in mpeg2 format which is a pain to edit and miniDV's record in DV format which has less compression and is more universal? Am I getting close here? So maybe my question is, are there hdd cameras that record DV format?

the hdd format of choice is avchd, which is not based on mpeg2, it's based on h.264(mpeg4).

go over to dvinfo.net, to the avchd forum, and download some of the hf11 test clips they have... see if you can develop an editing workflow, that way there won't be any surprises when it comes time to spend the money.