All I wanted to do was play Portal. I did finally get to play it today (almost done), although I bought it a week and a half ago. In the interim my computer has been somewhat less than cooperative. Long story short, I had a video card go bad, and had a hard drive get somewhat corrupted. (not sure yet whether I actually lost some data) After a week's worth of wrangling, much mental anguish, a new cpu fan, hard drive, and video card, I think I finally have a working computer. Dealing with computer hardware really is a pain. The trial and error method that works so well in learning to program and otherwise operate a computer works just as well with hardware, except with much more expensive mistakes. I'd stick entirely with the software side of things if it wasn't so much cheaper than buying a pre-built box (OS legitimatacy issues aside). That and I feel so knowledgeable when I do get it working; at least until the next time my computer is DOA and I have no idea what the problem is.