renejespersen has good advice,
adobe premiere is liked by the magazines, comes in full or elements versions etc, movie maker is free on windows, different versions for xp (v2) or vista (v6), ulead (now corel) video studio is also liked. both adobe & corel have trail downloads. (we have video studio on xp & vista). (there is also movie maker live but i have never seen it)
Mostly its file formats from your camera that may confuse, newer mpg or avchd video being less supported than dv.
Output to youtube or other internet should not be a problem.
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/ is worth a look if you are heading that way
of course if you have a mac .........