I would say Audacity also, though it had a learning curve for me, there's "too much" in it when I just use basic editing.
I'll second the suggestion of the Oldversion of Cool Edit, if you just need to record, edit and save into MP3. Some old versions will use a separate codec pack to add MP3, and I think you can add LAME's MP3 filter, .FLT file to it, and once done you can record a waveform, then save to MP3 easily.
CoolEdit was the best and worked on low end laptops, like a P1, we could record and edit a piece, convert to mp3 at 128k and FTP it to the station over the phone, all while at a location, and get broadcast quality, well as good as MP3 was at the time anyway.
At home I really liked Sound Forge as an easy editor, real simple to record and save. I don't have a clue if the Sound Forge has an Old Version you can freely get, or what the status of it is today. Sound Forge was the boss editor if you want simple.