Vegas is psuedo-pro software, so is very full featured...mixing many video/audio streams, etc, all a peice fo cake...and for $99 avg price, it's hard to go wrong buying this software.
Yes, therre are free apps out there, bu the one thing they don't have is the support that a paid app does...someone has to pay the programmers to fix issues...
I found other than transition effects, Vegas offers everything, in basics, that FinalCutPro does...and FinalCutPro is like $1500...