You already have a paint program and to do icons you need icon packager or Axialis or any other icon program.

I also use Microangelo, but I know that a lot of people like Axialis better.
I've tried it, it does have at least one feature that Microangelo doesn't have, the ability
to port Mac icons to XP format.

Ok sounds good guys, Ill check out those proggys, get them up and running see where I need to be from there, I remember paying alot of money for Photoshop and I loaded it and it looked like a blank screen with alot of tools on the taskbars then I closed it and havent touched it since..

I had a little trouble understand what some of you guys were talking about "so you can do a really sweet alpha blended .png file and then make an icon from it, preserving the transparency". this is a total different language to me.. IM trying to learn though..
im trying to get some research on it.

Happy new year everyone

Wish you all the luck you need. Hope to see your work soon.