Rob: An alternative to connecting the USB or Firewire connection on the digital camera directly to the same on your computer (via the cable and software that came with the camera) is to remove the flash card from the camera and inserting it in a USB 1.x/2.0 or Firewire flash card reader on your computer. This is conceptually similar to inserting a floppy disk, as you would then copy the files on the flash to a directory on your computer's hard drive. Once on the hard drive, you can store or process them as you wish.
USB 2.0 or Firewire (if your computer has one of these) offers much faster transfer rates than USB 1.x.