You might be able to control the suspend / unsuspend feature using the bios setup of the lap top. Another option is to disable it from windows, if you got it installed.
If you can get over with the initial confusion gimp will turn out to be a good choice. Its user interface is not the most intuitive one. The best is to get an introduction from a gimp user; if not from one of those training videos.
how does this new web page maker V2 compare to dreamweaver 9? Does it support flash embedding? Has anyone in this forum got any good experience with it?
What version of gimp are you using? In the latest version, the defaults options will just be fine. You can change the quality, but don't use the progressive option for jpeg compression. Try no compression for tiff.