Personally, I find that Mark Skippen's Toolkit does a better job at installing the correct drivers for the Nexus 7 and 10 and is available at XDA. Here. To add an additional note to the OP, Vista is the real issue and was probably the worst OS from MS, IMO.

Thanks for the advice, I've used this toolkit and drivers have installed perfectly... Now on to rooting.

Welcome to the forums.
 Rooting isn't the latest fad. If you would like to take the handcuffs off  and have administrative control of your Nexus7, Please search the forums for a bunch of reasons why rooting is beneficial. For me, there were some things I couldn't do file wise and it led me to rooting. The ability to write and designate apps to USB storage was enough for me. Depends on what your needs are. Stock this thing rocks.
There are a many members here that are rooted and flying this wonderful device to it's limits.
Glad to have you here and look forward to seeing you around.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Thanks for your comments and warm welcome bjs...

From my limited research I note one of the main reasons for rooting was to allow access to SD cards via an OTG cable. However,I now discover that an app is available that enables this without root.Had the app not been available, I would probably have rooted just to have this facility as I have a huge amount of films ( 1,487 to date ) stored on a multitude of SD cards and being able to access them via usb is important to me.

I have also come across a couple of articles talking about custom ROMS. Am I to assume a custom ROM is an alternative OS to the stock Android system that comes preloaded or have I misunderstood entirely?

If it is an alternative to the preloaded OS, then would it be any better than the stock system that comes with the Nexus 7? I understand why someone may want to upload a different ROM if you have a non Google hardware product running Android, but isn't the OS on the Nexus 7 supposed to be 'pure' because it's a Google device (all be it manufactured by Asus)

Sorry for all the questions, but just trying to do some lengthy research before deciding whether or not to root.

Many thanks in advance for all and any advice.

Hi all

I'm about to pull the trigger on a Nexus 7 but need to know if and how to tether to a Nokia N8 before I part with my cash.

If it's not possible then I'll have to look at an alternative.

Many thanks