I just bought the Canon Vixia HF200 after deciding my newborn is to precious to waste on an 8year old camcorder.
Now I hate being out of tune with technology but unfortunately I am on camcorders. The problem with my current camcoder is the difficulty to get the video stored on disk in a format that is universally playable.

Sy my question is what software/hardware do I need to do simple conversion and minor editing to a format that I can play back on a PC.

I am really looking for as little pain as possible during the conversion.

I want to store the videos on my WHS server. Space is zero concern. Quality and payability is all I care about. I do not want to lose any quality (or as little as possible).
Primarily I want to be able to play back via a PC as my main setup is a HTPC with Media Center front end. I also use Arcsoft TMT for BR/HD DVD playback. Secondary I want playback via DVD (or BR if space is an issue).

I will only do minor editing to cut videos or merge videos and other minor editing (add titles etc depending on effrot level).
I have a few PC's but my fastest is a gaming PC with P45 mobo, E8400 CPU, 4gb ram, Vista 32, and GTX285 GPU. I can easily upgrade any of the components as it is a custom build. I can also overclock a lot if needed (it's watercooled).
For playback my HTPC is similar with E6600 CPU and 4670 GPU

So based on all these parameters, do I need to upgrade hardware? and what software would you recommend? Also what format should I store the video in?
Or should I store the raw video and then make playable files from it?

Based on the above - would Adobe Premiere Elements 7 be a good choice for basic editing, merging, splitting and storing to different formats? What vital feature can this program not do that others can?