-Tried DiskCopy. When I played it back via mounted disk, it freezes DVD Player.
-42 was a bit too complicted and not enough documentation.
-DVDBackup was simply easy (freeware) and plays back just fine! Has sufficent documentations but didn't need to look it up. Read in readme especially DVDBackup Usage section.

When I have time, I plan on putting the 'backup' on DiskCopy with compression. Do know it'll take a LONG time.

Have an upcoming long flights and looking forward to this without carrying an extra luggage of DVDs. ;)

Good recommendation! I've been looking for something like this for the Mac for a while. A nice GUI, and if you want to compress the movie further (say to DivX), you can use something like D-Vision, which provides a nice GUI to ffmpeg.

The final folder is about 7.7 GB in size though Finder is terribly confused and thinks it's only 770 MB. Maybe the new laptop can perform miracles!

The movie plays fine and I can finally have DVD player ready at all times to show off my new 17" laptop's screen, without tying up the drive. (I don't think I'll further compress this showcase movie, lest it not show off the screen.)

Thanks for suggesting DVDbackup. It is exactly what I've been needing especially because the above hint rarely works for me.
It's great to be able to have a backup copy of DVD either on the Mac or on DVD-R media.
However, I wish someone could point me to the right place where I can learn to split DVDs that are too large to fit on one 4.7gb DVD-R media. It's very taxing on the hard drive real estate to keep all the DVD backups on the hard drive. It's more convenient to have the backups on separate DVD-R medias... only if there is an easy way for a clicker like meself.
I've tried fortytwo, ffmpeg, etc. They're still to daunting for my limited skills. Will there ever be DVD-R media larger than 4.7gb? Can we buy/use double-layered DVD-R media?