I downloaded Picasa2 (free, from Google) to see what it would do, and the answer is quite a lot.

It scans your pc for images and catalogues them, sorting by folder and date. Sensibly it ignores images held in the browser cache (IE and Firefox), but catches images attached to emails (though truthfully I can't speak for Outlook or O. Express; I use a much more secure client called Pocomail). It presents images to you as thumbnails.

It allows you do undertake basic editing of images - various filters, colour "correction" and so on, and has a timeline view which is superb, presenting all your images in order of date. You can straighten images, too, if the camera was held at an angle.... and we've all done that, I suspect.

The other good thing is it finds all the pictures you put in a folder that was obvious at the time, but that then you forgot about, so you can spend hours ooh-ing and aahh-ing over images you'd forgotten you have.

It's free, and can be downloaded >>>here<<< . I know one or two sources have muttered in the past about what gets sent to Google so if you're concerned you might want to read the EULA or Privacy Policy . I can't see any particular problem that would worry me, but IANAL