How in the heck to you shrink a normal picture of 4.2 MB down to fit your requirements for an Avatar??

Post it on Photobucket or similar ( which you would have to anyway to get it on here ) and resize/edit it . Im no wiz but you should be able to do that with just your own PC ..............4.2 mb is huge , hope its not your Mrs . You could also try googling " how to resize photo " or similar , amazing what there is out there

Thanks Mc Tool,
I've gone into my edit mode but just can't seem to get it to shrink. Got a bunch of things going on right now, all at once, I'll try it again when I can concentrate.
RareDuc

Yeah , I will have a fiddle too , not so much shrinking the actual size but reducing the size data wise . I have done it before but I cant remember how

in windows you can mail it to yourself and let the system do it for you

You have a Win O.S. ?
There should be "resize" tool.
I have no ideas for Apple computers but I think tere's something like this, while in Linux O.S. you can downloas a plenty of software able to make many mods to images. The one I like is Gimp

For Macs open your image in Preview. From the Tools dropdown menu select Adjust Size..., enter the pixel size you want and click OK.