If you use an incident meter whatever it says will be correct.  If you use a
reflected meter it will be trying to reduce everything to 18% reflectance
and if you are metering snow that reading will be about two stops too
little...either open up two stops or set your film speed at 1/4 what it
actually is.

    Because of the poor health I haven't had much chance to photograph winter
sense like used to (for quite some years), but I can tell you that it seems
like P&S does lot better on white snow than DSLR.

    Sorry I don't have much experience to share, except some information about
DSLR that you may run into the issue between overexposed (lacking of detail)
and grey tone.  But for most people they don't seem to mind much or notice
the difference.

Ive never had an issue even with cheap cameras always on auto,
experiment with EV setting, I recommend a polarising filter and
experiment with white balance

What type of camera? I have an EVF (specifically a Kodak P850). I've shot
quite a number of photos over the last couple of winters under varying
conditions and never had an issue - I do shoot in raw so that I have a lot
of latitude if I need it.

Heh heh...  where I live it might snow almost any day of
the year, so photographers here do get a little practice
in dealing with it!

Your camera's light meter takes a _average_ reading over
some specified area (a spot, or a center weighted area,
or the whole scene, etc. etc.) and it assumes that that
area has an equal amount of white and black or an equal
distribution of everything in between white and black.

Usually that is true, but when it isn't you have to sort
of help the light meter out.  When the whole scene is
mostly black, the camera thinks its lighter than it is.
To make it as dark as it really is you have to reduce
exposure.  The opposite is true with snow, as the camera
will see a lot more light (from all that white) than it
would from an average scene.  It thinks all that white
should average out to middle grey tones, and cuts the
exposure appropriately.  If you want it to be white, you
have to add more exposure using the cameras Exposure
Compensation setting.

Generally between +1 fstop (old dirty snow, or lots of
trees too, etc) and +2.5 fstops (new clean snow and
everything is very white) will work.

Note that +2.5 fstops with a digital camera will put the
"average" part of the scene right at the maximum that
the camera can record Everything bright than average
will be blown!  You might use that to effect by spot
metering in the brightest part of the snow, locking
exposure and then getting your intended shot.

But there is a _better_ way to set exposure, which
eliminates the guess work.  Don't use the light meter,
instead take a picture and look at either the camera's
histogram or a "blink-on-overexposure" LCD display, and
use that the set exposure for the next shot.  If you
camera can produce either of those, that is a far better
indication of proper exposure than an incident light
meter!

About 7" if you ask me.

Joel