is there a way to convert quicktime videos into something like mpg or any other format that will work on windows movie maker?

Winff is good. It's a tad slow, but it's much more consistent than any other converters I've used, and it's freeware.

is there anything faster?

Not that I know of, but I may check around later to see if I have one.

EDIT: if you don't mind paying, there are plenty of good ones around, but they tend to cost around $60

You can get some programs that are slightly faster than winff but they won't be a lot faster.

Video Conversion in general is a really slow process.

Try http://www.media-convert.com

That would work but it depends on what size the file is if its more than 150 MB he can't use that site.

Even better is www.mediaconverter.org it can be really fast but it just depends on whether there are lots of people downloading at the same time as you.
It's done me wonders though

MediaCoder is by far the best audio/video transcoder (converter) that I have yet to come upon. You can convert practically anything to practically anything. It's fast, it's updated almost every other day, and it has some nice documentation. However, it can be somewhat complex to use. Check out the documentation though and you should be good to go. Please PM me if you have any problems getting it to work and I will see what I can do.

-Ian

I use aimersoft video converter, and it works great, you may have a try

I use SUPER. Even though the download is somewhat slow and the site layout is somewhat... aggravating, it's a fairly fast converter. Plus it's free

It does require some basic tech know-how, but it's usually better than all those $30 programs from shady sites.