MsLady,
Without wishing to be personal, I am surprised you have such Friends!
Please don't be offended - a light-hearted jape.
My link is for something fairly pedestrian compared to the other nominated software, but I have found it invaluable all the same.
http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html
A screen grab utility that does what you would expect of a screen grabber if you had never seen one. Marvelous.
In a similar vein, something that I recently found a link to on this forum is Wink, a sequential screengrabber. Basically you can use it for creating training presentations. I haven't used it much yet but am very impressed to date. I apologize if it was on this thread that I got the link! It's late at night here.
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/
Very marvelous!