Printing cards on a sheet

[IoriYagami]

So, I plan to print out a huge number of pictures. They're not really Magic cards, but it's just the same - huge number of images, all of them almost the same size, they have to be fitted on a sheet.
I tried doing it in MS Word and Publisher, but it's insane to do it by hand. I can't figure out how to use macros, since those ass-hats at M$ disabled Macro recording in Publisher . I tried stuff like IrfanView, and it can't do it. MS photo gallery (in Vista) kinda works, but the sizes are incorrect.
What I want to get:
Drag'n'drop folder with a gazillion of images. Set the page in such a way, that images are all resized to given size, preserving aspect ratio (3.5 x 2.5 inches in my case). Put images in a grid on a page (say A4 page), so that card would fit nicely close to each other (for easy cutting). Print that stuff, either paper, or PDF (I do have some decent PDF printers installed, not a problem). I see absolutely no reason for this stuff not be done automatically instead of manually - pretty simple algorithm.
Do I really need Desktop Publishing software for such a thing? Can you recommend something free/open source?

[silly freak]

I think this question could receive an answer (or have an answer already?) on https://stackoverflow.com/ or https://superuser.com/ easily.
I take it you're on Windows, but Latex might be a way to do it. Lay out one side of cards, then write a script that creates that layout for an entire folder of cards. As Latex is text-based, generating a document is pretty simple.

[IoriYagami]

Thanks, I'll look into it. It's odd that a pretty simple thing is not obvious. But maybe it's just me, I'm a complete noob in graphic editing.
So far, I tried Pos-somthing utility, Picasa, PaintNET and GIMP. I'll look into it more.