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I am interested in editing old videos, so I can print pictures from them. At the moment I am looking at Belkin (USB VideoBus II), so I am wondering if this would be a good buy. I am using XP.

Answer: It's hard for me to know if I'm making the right recommendation because I have to make some assumptions about what you're trying to do (I'm not certain whether your main purpose is to edit videos or generate photos). I'm also not a photo editing expert.

Since you mention "old" videos I'll assume VHS, and that you want to capture these videos directly from a VCR to your PC. This is important, because it limits you only to ANALOG capture devices, like the Belkin VideoBus.

If you had a digital camcorder with an ANALOG IN jack, then I'd tell you to get a digital video capture device and capture your video through the camcorder. Because all capturing methods are not equal, and this would allow you to capture your footage in the DV format, which gives you an extremely high-quality AVI capture. This would also be convenient if you ever want to edit and convert footage to digital.

ANALOG devices, by contrast, usually capture in a lower-quality MPEG format, which means you start losing image crispness immediately. Furthermore, with analog technology you lose a bit of quality with every generation of copying/capturing.

But wait. USB makes it worse. Because of the slow connection, USB limits your capture resolution to 352 x 288. That's fine for streaming small video scenes on the Internet, but it's inadequate for archiving. So as you can imagine I'm advising against the Belkin Videobus.