cojo,
If you are looking for a real easy to use program for resizing your photos, and avatars, see what I just stumbled onto:
PIXresizer is a photo resizing program to easily create web and email friendly versions of your images with reduced file sizes. The reduced files are saved in a different folder, so your original images are not altered at all. PIXresizer offers several different resizing methods to choose from and can automatically recognize image sizes to calculate the best fit. In addition, it can convert between image formats (JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF), rotate images, convert to grayscale and resize multiple images in batch mode. A great companion for webmasters and digital photographers.
The best part, this program is FREE. No addware or spyware.
Go here for all of the info and for the download:
http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm
Enjoy