Wow, I really need a vacation. And, curiously enough, I am now on one, thank God. Just in the nick of time, I think.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were not at all restful, for a variety of reasons. Not at all.

Sunday was starting to look restful, and I had a nice little meander through the Camp Hill mall with my lovely brood and friends. Stopped by the E.B. therein and found what I thought was a pretty good deal on a really cool Lord of the Rings, Return of the King game. $9.99 for a DVD version of this game seemed like a right nice price to pay. So, thrilled at the thought of abandoning all cares of work, taxes, grown-up life, etc., and looking forward to immersing myself in the game, I hurried home to get started.

I should know better by now.

After the quick setup and hungry consummation of large amounts of disk space, I eagerly clicked the “play” button… and was informed that the video card that I had was not muscular enough to handle my shiney new $9.99 video game. Now, granted, computer housing said cheap VIA video chip is a 2 year-old WalMart Microtel machine. And that I’ve spent $200 for a computer that is still a pretty decent machine (1.6 G Duron, 768 megs of RAM) 2 years later is impressive. But it was one mother of a killjoy. And, in retrospect, what I should have done at that exact moment was to return the $9.99 game, assuming E.B. would allow it. And if they would not allow it, I should have put the game on the shelf and chalked it up to a silly impulse buy.

But did I accept defeat like a sane human being? Certainly not! After all, I’m a MAN! And a GEEK MAN at that!!

I spent 2 hours running from store to local store in search of a cheap video card that would work for the game. At the conclusion of this trek, I found this card, a GeForce MX 4000 for $45. And, as anyone who knows anything about video cards would be saying to themselves right now, that wasn’t a very good card to buy. It plays the game, sort of. It’s really slow and sluggish in the most important parts. And while Halo runs on it (I finally beat the Silent Cartographer in the demo!!!), it runs slow and sluggish in the most important parts too. Dang. So, as I type this, my current plan is to take back the $45 video card and find a decent/doesn’t-suck video card that will likely run me around $100.

Let’s review for a moment. This game will have cost me $110. Doesn’t seem like such a bargain anymore, now does it? No.

But I’ll be darned if I’m going to spend $45 on a crappy video card and regret it for the next year. I’ll show that silly $9.99 video game who’s boss, yes I will!! I shall spend $100 instead!! Muah hah! Now who’s smarter, eh?!!!

Now, half-way through this conquest comes the other side of my brain (that side which tries so very hard to be helpful in these matters, but which only serves to confuse things even more), with such thoughts as these: maybe I should just call it quits with the upgrade-the-PC game and buy an Xbox finally. I do definitely want one to be able to play Street Fighter Anniversary Collection when it comes out on the 22nd of this month. And despite my friend’s dire warnings that such a path will only lead to undesirable results, I’m strongly considering it.

Any thoughts? Any recommendations on the right low-priced card to get if I do get a new PC video card? Should I go for the Xbox?