No, no, no, it's a free download program. Boy you've been kind of persnickety lately ... I don't appreciate it when people are flip with me when I'm trying to be nice:
It's quick, simple and does a lot of the basic crap you want a photo editor to do with a minimum of aggrivation, things like slideshow, crop, resize, tone correction, and it's pretty intuitive, so you don't need a textbook in one hand while you're using it.
For simple cropping and re-sizing of images, nothing beats Irfanview. If I want to make an avatar or something, I can open, crop, re-size, save and re-name an image in Irfanview faster than it takes to just open it in Photoshop.
Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
Paint Shop Pro (JASC) is what I use for most stuff. It has 90% of photoshop's capabilities but is easier to use and doesnt cost as much. its also PS compatible for filters, picture tubes, and other add-on's.