PSP 8.0 is a bloated piece of garbage. (IMHO)

Does anyone have an alternative?
Preferably free?

GIMP? or something? is that any good?
We basically need MSpaint utilities, to clean up mostly B&W images
and then transparent functions.

PSP 8 does not make it easy to do anything anymore.
Not to mention it takes forever to load up on my laptop.