I've been using Vegas for quite some time now, it's a fast editor with all the important features, but sometimes I need some other features like masking, or better chroma key, or anything, so would like to tryout Adobe Premiere and see if I can work there. I have a feeling Premiere is more serious program, but wouldn't wanna invest in it if it's not good.

Does anybody here use Premiere? What do you think about it (specially in comparison to Vegas)

I used a previous version, but didn't liked a graphical environment, it seems to me a little more complicated than in Vegas. As for the masking and chroma key - the best tool is Adobe After Effects! Anyway, download trial and try.

If you are on a PC your choices are a bit limited (No Final Cut Pro for example) but Premiere is feature rich and used by lots of folks shooting DSLR. However, if you are wanting to move in a more Pro direction, I'd skip both of them and suggest you move on to AVID. Avid is a long running Pro Video standard. You can get a software only version that doesn't require hard ware boards like the old version used to. If you can't run Final Cut Pro, I'd say Avid is the best option as plan B. Those two are what the pro's use (Here in the states anyway) for the most part. Most post houses you go in to, it will either be a Avid/Pro tools shop, or Final Cut Pro/ Logic, or both.

I used Premiere before using Vegas and it's a very professional program. The only think that I don't like is that it uses a lot of computer ram to work and it's heavy. However the thing that made me change it for Vegas is that I got a Sony camera and it has a Sony spceific format that only Vegas read. (at least at that moment).

I heard that Final Cut is a top of the top program. I wonder why it's a privilege only for the Mac ?!?

Not sure, but I liked AE chroma key and masking. This is why I wanted to go to Premier, to use it as all-in-one package, Using vegas for editing and AE only for chroma is a bit slow process.