for those who are fascinated by new applications of technology, this merits a look... http://java.sun.com/features/2001/08/photomesa.html it is a project of the computer lab at the Univ. of Maryland (USA), and has a number of interesting features in its various menus... It is NOT as fast to load as things like Irfanview, but it does what it says and is reasonably fast after loading, and some may prefer the Java zooming...etc. I found it thru the page about Java Web Start..(it requires a recent version of Java, noted on the download page){this is NOT 'hard to do'...just 'different'}...http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/index.html
the Washington Post has an article about the computer lab and the people who do the designs, with a mention of how useful Photomesa is.
(this will be online for a number of days......worth reading....)