My laptop does not have a firewire port, so how do I connect my XL2 and laptop?

I checked again and found a small port. Problem solved.

Glad you found the port. In general: There are USB to FIREWIRE adapters available if yo do a web search - don't know if they would work well for video. Also you can find PCMCIA cards that provide FIREWIRE connectivity. TigerDirect has a card for about $20. You would need a laptop wiht drives fast enough to cope with the video stream, and I suspect most of them might come with FIREWIRE already.

I have a small 4 pin port on my laptop that is the same as my XL2, so I bout a $2.99 firewire off eBay that has a small 4 pin plug on both ends.