[zarmanto]

Unfortunately, the reason that all the reviews you can find for analog to firewire converters are at least six years old is because Apple started rolling out systems with USB 2.0 in the middle of 2003... and many vendors followed suit by rebadging all of the USB based hardware that they'd already been selling for Windows machines, and dropping support for Firewire hardware altogether... or only adding it as an after-thought, in some cases.

That's not to say that you don't have any options, of course... but rather, that is to say that (as you've already noted) the few remaining Firewire specific options will most likely be older hardware.

Now, having said that: You stated that your Mac laptop is a 1GHz model... does it happen to be one of the models released after the Fall of 2003? Because Apple didn't produce very many laptop models at that speed prior to the introduction of USB 2.0... so if your Mac happens to be one of the ones with USB 2.0 onboard, I would strongly recommending an EyeTV Hybrid as your best solution. It has a breakout cable which will allow you to connect your analog equipment to it to perform the task at hand, and at $150, it's reasonably close to the lower price bracket as compared to the other devices mentioned in this thread. What's more, it's not a dead-end investment that you'll end up tossing in the trash as soon as you finish converting all those old VHS tapes, because when your finances permit you to upgrade your computer, the EyeTV will also give you the option of watching and recording over-the-air HDTV broadcasts on your new Mac. (I suspect that your existing 1GHz system will probably have difficulty rendering HD video at full size.)