If you would have listened in the beginning when I said just try Photo Gallery... lol

I did, but couldn't afford it. But maybe I can put a slide show on the company site and justify it as an expense.

I'm looking at the documentation and it says it's for Vista and XP.

Needs a little update?

I'm starting with Photo Gallery. Is there a way to center the work area display on my screen, as I design? I have a 24" HD monitor and it's way to the left. And when I view the final show, can that be centered on the screen too? It's doing the same thing.

Double click the title bar. (Double click where it says CoffeeCup Photo Gallery)

As for the Gallery not centering on your page. You have to center it yourself. It does not just pop in and center.

I'm definitely going to check out the CC Photo Gallery now

To add to this idea, though, a front page news slider designer would be awesome! Finding a script to do that is super simple, but creating a design for it isn't. I've used tons of sliders, some paid others free, but they never really match my website all that well.

So a Coffee Cup News Slider Maker/Designer would be awesome!

JRC – There's another option. If you have an SDrive account, CC recently added Albums. It's been in beta, not sure if it's generally available yet. Anyway, you can upload images to your Storage then choose Albums to make non-Flash slideshows/galleries.
Here's a preview page (a much smaller version is embedded on my website):
http://callie.coffeecup.com/albums/artwork/

As with other CC offerings, I'm sure there will be updates and improvements. This is just the beginning
So, if you're using SDrive, it's worth checking out.

Thanks, Paintbrush! Those are close, but not quite what I had in mind. The actual slide show isn't the problem. I was thinking more of the slider's design/appearance, like custom 'featured' and next/previous buttons, along with the perimeter design, and overlaying text.

I just don't have the java in me to achieve such a thing.

That's why we're nagging the dev team to get going on features for this
It's pretty basic right now, but I think they picked up on all the discussions about adding JS/JQuery stuff to CC sites (since Flash isn't always the best choice).
There's also a non-Flash version of the Photo Gallery coming sometime "soon".

Have you checked out Eric's examples? http://progrower.coffeecup.com/
See Slideshows in the left-side menu