No, it's a standard off the shelf HP notebook with firewire.... as mentioned had worked ok for many months just 2 days ago I hit this brick wall. 

Hi, I've been using Studio 11 on my HP DV9000 running Vista 32Bit home premium for about 8 months with ok success, but now having a problem with capturing video from my Sony DV.  Each time after about 3/4 seconds of capture the software starts to drop frames at an enormous rate and within a few more seconds I have to stop the project.  ...