I just spent a few hours playing around with Paint Shop Pro and IrfanView.
The IrfanView program is nice and small and will batch resize, convert etc, just fine. It's nice that the owner makes it available as freeware.
Fortunately, I already had a copy of Jasc's Paint Shop Pro. Unfortunately, I don't know how to use all it's features! Never could figure out how to batch resize (other than the default option of 150 x 100) until Ian said it could be done. So, after another couple of hours of pulling my hair out, I stumbled across a feature where a custom script can be created to do all the resizing like I prefer.
The next time I get stumped I'll ask sooner.
Appreciate the help guys