Video Editing ?'s

I've recently started various multimedia activities...recording, editing, publishing audio, photos, and videos. I'm a Film & Digital Media student at University of California, Santa Cruz and everything there related to media is Mac-based. I know Windows, I trust Windows, Windows is logical, Windows is ***affordable***, and so I'd prefer to use my own laptop and not A) use someone else's laptop B) spend epic amounts of time at the campus labs C) buy an overpriced Apple computer. I've asked this question of people at UCSC but no one seems able to think outside the Apple, so I'm posting it here.

I have two questions:
1)
I'm accruing thousands upon thousands of files. How should I organize, name, tag, folder, etc my files? I have a 250GB SATA internal and a 1TB LaCie external. The majority of my files are day-in-the-life-of or blog kind of things, but I also do narrative and documentary projects. So far I've done everything chronologically with sub-folders titled by the specific activity. I got Name It Your Way (NIYoW) but it seemed a bit awkward to use; tried it once and it didn't seem able to append suffixes/prefixes correctly.
2)
What video editing software should I buy? I've been using SONY Vegas 7, Acid 7, DVD 4, and Sound Forge 8, but they feel dated and aren't real easy-to-use. These are my editing needs:
- HD Video
- many different formats/codecs
- extensive editing potential (transitions, color correction, layering, fading, multi tracks)
- preferably an integrated audio, photo, video editing/publishing suite
- affordable (aka, not a Mac, not AVID)
- preferably 64-bit

I shoot stills on a Nikon, record audio on an Olympus, and will probably get a Canon camera in the X series (XH or XL ?).

Thanks!

Okay - which category post should I keep?

Helpful

Yes, been using the comparison at topten to peruse them. Any reasons, personally, you prefer Adobe? I feel like if I got Adobe I could start with Premiere Elements and then buy the whole CS if I liked it and wanted to pay that much. Any downsides to Adobe, iyo?