XMPEG

XMPEG is an excellent DVD converter that uses high quality MPEG/AC3 decoders. These decoders are lossless, so their usage will ensure the best resulting quality for your video output. Resulting formats could be SVCD, VCD and DivX.
The program comes with two plugins: AVI writer and bbMPEG. Both are very good and can be extensively configured.
The user interface is very clear, featuring a Wizard Mode where you can fine tune all the conversion parameters. When you finish to adjust the settings, you can immediately start the conversion process, or return to the main window to make some final adjustments.
The main window is divided into floating panels: video window (preview), a player, audio and video tools. These panels give you the freedom of arrange them as you want, and you can toggle some to hide/show them. This mode will result very comfortable for you, taking advantage of the space on the screen. Of course, please note that you will need a good resolution to achieve the best results (1024 x 768 minimum) since it's not possible to resize the video window.