HELP
here's a quick little trick that I know worked for someone else. If you have hotmail or yahoo e-mail and you "attach a photo" to an e-mail, it automatically converts it to a smaller size. Then if you send the picture to yourself in an e-mail and save it on your computer it will be smaller.
The trick to making this work is that you don't use the "attach a file button," but rather the "attach a photo" or picture button. If you use the attach a file button it will attach the larger picture, not down covert to a fewer pixels.
Another tricks lots of folks do is us their webcam. Most webcams take low resolution pictures which can easily be uploaded as your avatar!
Best of luck,
Dave