MyEventViewer is a free event viewer utility that is a good alternative to Windows Event viewer. Unlike Windows event viewer, MyEventViewer shows event details and description in the same window, instead of opening a new window for that.
UI of MyEventViewer is divided into 2 panes. Upper pane shows all the events. You can click on any event to get more information about that in lower pane.
Apart from that, you can select one or more events, and save them to a file (HTML / XML / TXT), or copy to clipbooard.
MyEventViewer also lets you access external event log files by using its command line parameter. It is event possible to access event files of some remote computer, if you have full admin access on that computer.
All in all, MyEventViewer is a good free alternative to Windows event viewer. However, Windows event viewer has become quite advanced since launch of Vista. So, you might want to stick to that for Vista and 7, and can try this one out in older computers. Download free here.