Cropping and adding text ?
Try mspaint, free with every version of windows Vista.
Full editors ?
The Gimp
Image viewers, croppers and resizers, see
Irfanview,or the various tools at
Faststone.
Basic fixes,
Picasa,
Photoscape
If you try ebay, you can often get Paint Shop Pro 7for less than $25 and it works fine in Vista.