Lots of people find pinaccle unstable - shamefully so often.

Most up to date editiors should handle vobs without transcoding, but you will always need to copy to your hd and sometimes the .vob needs to be renamed .avi or .mpg to work.

Try some free trails - see the links tab up top for links to trials.

I suggest trying the latest version premier as you are familiar with that.

As for macs, no, they are not better for video editing. Mac has spent buckets on advertsiing to create that myth.