Opening Photos in Windows Vista

Factual Questions
1

Or Fista, as I call it…

When I’m in Explorer and double click on a photo, it opens it in Windows Photo Gallery (which, I guess, is the new Picture and Fax Viewer).

If I click on another pic from Explorer, it opens a NEW instance of WPG. With XP, it would just open the pic in the current window of Fax viewer.

Once I’m in WPG, if I right click and choose “Open With” and choose The Gimp (photo editing software), it will open The Gimp as many times as I open different pics, instead of opening each photo in the current running of The Gimp.

Does this all make sense? It’s driving me out of my mind. I’ll absentmindedly click on ten pics to open, not noticing that I have ten versions of WPG running. Same when I’m editing pics and get ten versions of The Gimp running.

I’ve searched EVERYwhere for how to make it open these the way I want, but I just can’t find the right search term. Any help is appreciated!

2

get an image manager so you don’t have to use windows crappy ass bundle software.

3

If you click them one at a time, it (WPG) opens separate windows, but if you select them all and double-click, it only opens one–at least for me.

And you can use the forward/back buttons at the bottom to move through other photos in the current folder, so I suppose the worst case would be copy the images you want to open to a folder; double-click one of them, and then scroll through with the buttons.

Alternatively, there’s lots of good photo-management software out there.

4

Memstat and Time Winder, will another program solve the problem? Won’t I keep getting new instances of The Gimp running each time I open a pic?