The solution is simple; Change the communication setting, found in menu, from "normal" to "PTP" , whatever that is. I found no mention of the communication options in the manual, yet. How lame is that?
This soultion was offered by jeff1212 at http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/53065-5-windows-vista-canon-problems. Thanks Jeff1212!!!

Now for some ranting: What are these manufactures thinking, are they even worth our hard earned money? I can go out and get a much less expensive camera from China and have very little difficulty getting my photos and videos off the device. I won't pay another penny to either SONY (shit of new york) or canon products, they are playing games with the consumer and packaging too much garbage software with their devices.

3dzp at para-az dot com