This product has had a mixed bag of reviews. For me, the VC500 worked extremely well for conversion of VCR tapes to online files.
My hardware setup is as follows: Quad processor with 8GB of memory running 64 bit Windows 7. It is a normal home machine but modern - only a year old. It is my belief that one needs powerful hardware for VCR tape conversion and don't do anything else online at the same time.
I plugged in the Vortech hardware, loaded the driver and other software and all just worked. I agree with other reviewers that the manual is a waste of time. Half of it is how to load the software. The other half is a so-called description about what the controls do. What is missing is help on how to get the task done - ie should you use NTSC or PAL? And there are 8 output choices - what is best to use for what? Etc.
I did contact Vortech technical support by email before purchasing the product to find out it it was useable with Windows 7 because their website says it isn't. I got a fast response with almost the correct answer - I was told yes, Windows 7 was okay but I would need to download more software from their website. Turns out the software CD did have the latest software.
The video program Ulead from Corel is included with the VC500. I am not experienced with this type of software so I do not have a good basis of comparison. I tried Ulead and it seemed to do all the things required. But so does Microsoft's Movie Maker supplied free.
(Written later) I did find that Microsoft Movie Maker does not handle voiceovers - ie ability to have voice and music as the "soundtrack". ULead has the advantage here.