Converting large video files ?

A while back we bought a Panasonic Hard drive type video camera to take movies of the new grandbaby. This thing makes very large files-1 minute of video is approx. 23 Mb. All I want to do is shrink these files to something I can send in e-mail. I spent a long time on the web last night trying to find a simple way to do this. If I could get it into Windows Movie Maker, then it's a simple procedure to compress it, but WMM doesn't recognize MPEG2. So, I need something SIMPLE to convert the MPEG2 to AVI, or some such so I can use WMM to compress it. I found numerous programs, and downloaded a couple, but they're not simple. I have no desire to have to sit in front of the computer for hours just to convert a file. Does anyone have a non labor intensive method to convert MPEG2 to AVI, or whatever format will work in Movie Maker? I'm running pretty old systems with Windows XP Home.
Thanks, Hutch

http://www.formatoz.com/ there ya go. That program is free, simple to use, and works wonders, if you really need help, i'll post a screen shot by screen shot of how to do it if you'd like. But you should be able to get it, it's very simple to use. And it's pretty fast.

Thanks Eggshell! I got it. That's what I needed-simple program for a simple mind!

Not a problem man!