connecting oldish camcorder to laptop ?

Hi, i wonder if anybody can help.
I am trying to connect a canon mv550i to my laptop which operates on Vista.
I've tried the USB port, but with no success.
When we bought this camera, only about 6 years ago we connected it to our desktop through a IEEE1394 interface that was supplied with the camcorder. The desktop operates on windows XP.
Many thanks - Pierre.