Thanks all again, you all have been very helpful. This is #3 on my list as buying a portable DVD player and a VHS to DVD converter so I can get over 20 year old VHS tapes converted before they disintegrate. Should I ask here what to buy on this thread too.
Rather than converting your VHS tapes to DVD's, you might want to look at converting them to a digital format that can be viewed on your computer. DVD's will also be obsolete in a few years as everything is being downloaded via the internet. (I believe all the new Apple Macbooks are being sold without DVD players.) The simplest way of converting the VHS files to digital, is to plug the output of your VHS player into the input of your digital Camcorder, then transfer the Camcorder file to your computer.
http://www.brandinteractivism.com/2007/11/how-to-digitize.html You could then download those files to Youtube or just play them on your computer. Rather than just storing the video files on your computer (because they do crash) you should store them on internet storage service like Google Drive.
I haven't done this with VHS files, however we have just completed scanning and downloading all our family photos into a digital format and we are using Google's Picasa as a cataloging tool. I am now looking into how to transfer our old collection of vinyl record albums into a digital format.