I used photoshop to drop the jpeg size to about 760k.
VBulletin (the forum software here) has a file size limit of about 2megs (or was it 3???) either way think about other users who don't have broadband connections and server here which needs to balance the load of sending lots of heavy pictures to each member when they view a thread.
Most people will notice an increase after visiting the same thread again since most of the page is put into your browsers cache (local memory).
You could just set your camera to take lower resolution pictures and not have to worry about scaling your pictures afterwards, but then you would have lower quality pictures for your own ... hmmmm
check out download.com and I'm sure you'll find something for Windoze for free. I didn't know about the Microsoft solution.
For Mac users go to versiontracker.com they have lots of free stuff too. Or use the previews the software that comes included and drop the quality of the image and hit save.
GIMP is great! Almost better than photoshop which is really expensive. But both of these have a lot of things that you really don't need unless you want to get fancy
