If you're afraid of being bogged down by menus and options and confusing programs, try MS Movie Maker first. It's pretty simple to use after a little fumbling around, you'll find it pretty intuitive. If it's just for hobby/home use, it'll impress 90% of your family/friends - even if you just randomly assign music to a slideshow. Of course if we're talking a more professional/college use, you'd probably want to skip the program and go for someting available at your school's computer lab.

As for the placement of the titles/overlays (I think they call it that in that program), you can choose where and how you want th words to appear in the frame. Fonts not fancy enough? DL fonts from the net and put them in your fonts folder on your computer.

Hope this helps.