I bought Michelle Caesar IV for her birthday.  I thought it would be an excellent gift…

Since I gave her my old work laptop when I upgraded, I thought she should be able to play her new game when we were on trips, or any time she was stuck somewhere with nothing better to do for a couple of hours. 

Problem #1:  Caesar IV uses the *latest* in graphics technology, and has no support for older video cards.  In a desktop, that’s not that big of a problem theoretically all you need to do is change the vid card.  In a laptop, specifically, in *her* laptop, the vid card is not replacable!  So Michelle cannot use her game in that laptop.  We did find out that the game will work in my newer laptop, but I don’t plan to upgrade for at least another year, so she is SOL on that one.

We loaded the game on Michelle’s desktop, but had to turn the graphics *WAY* down to make it playable.  The vid card I had in that machine was $130 2 years ago…  I don’t expect things to stay the same forever, but… C’MON!!! 2 years??!??!?!!?!?!?!????  Well… Like I said before… No biggie, right? Just need to plop down another $150 on a new vid card, right?  After a week of searching I found THE card that I wanted.  It was perfect! not quite bleeding edge, but definately top notch!  Unfortunately it was $220 with a $20 MIR.  I did catch a break though, right after I bought it, I was able to price match when I found it for sale for $150 @ Best Buy… so if I get the MIR back (fat chance), it will have only cost me $130.  That’s Great!

Problem #2: The “Perfect Card” turns out was PCI-E… My desktop only had AGP!!!  I did some searching and my perfect vid card’s AGP cousin is $250!  no way am I paying that much for a vid card!!! and the cheaper cards were not nearly as good!  So… being me… I had to buy a new Mobo and Processor! lol  The new mobo and processor were about $200 @ Fry’s…  So I get home and guess what?!?!????  My memory in the old machine was DDR, the new machine requires DDR2! 

Ok, so I go and do some searching and find out thru bestbuy.com that my BestBuy has a 1GB stick of DDR2 4200 ram in stock for cheap.  I decide to just drive over and pick it up, instead of buying it online for instore pickup… what a mistake!!!! I get there and the incompetent blue shirt can’t help me.  They can’t find the Ram and he claims it isn’t even in his system.  So I pulled up the BestBuy website and show the guy that it says its available in his store.  He proceeds to ramble some random words that don’t really make sense together and I get the impression that he is attempting to explain that he has no idea how the systme works or if it is even real-time. sheesh!

So… after pulling my hair out on that one, I end up just buying a 512MB stick that was almost as much as the cheap 1GB stick!  When I get home, I go back to the best buy website and order the ram for instore pickup.  Guess what?>!?!??!? I get an email FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER indicating that the item is ready for pickup!!!!! WTF?!?!?!??????

Anyway… So I put the machine together with the 512MB stick and got it back up and running. (after re-activation of windows… Thanks Microsoft for making sure that innocent users are pained by your stupid process, while illegal copies have NO PROBLEM installing without activation!) I turn on Michelle’s new game and the graphics are AWESOME! I start playing with settings and bump everything up to make use of the new hardware… then…

Problem #3: The machine restarts!  I tried lowering the settings, but the machine kept restarting!!!!!!! Ok, so I figure that a) I need more ram (which I have to pick up anyway) and b) my power supply is lacking (only 350W).  So I pick up a new 500W power supply @ Fry’s ($40, with a $40 MIR, so it may be free, bonus!).  I go to BestBuy to pick up the Ram… you know… the ram that I got an email indicatiing was sitting at the desk WAITING for me to pick it up…  Well… 30 minutes later, the blue shirt FINALLY finds my ram.  in the back. LAME!!!!

So I get home with my brand new Ram and Power Supply.  I am excited.  Just to recap, the only things left from the old system are the case and the DVD burner (which is only a year old).  I install the PS and the new ram and decide to leave in the other 512MB stick, intending to give my wife a great machine with 1.5 GB.  Well… I turn it on and it posts! WOOT! but then…

Problem #4:  It gets to the loading windows machine and restarts!  Many, many reboots later, I can’t even get it past the Ram check screen! ARG!!!! So I start playing Musical Ram, moving the 2 sticks of ram between the 4 slots on the mobo…  Nothing works!!!!!  I eventually figure out that the 512 mb and 1 gig aren’t playing well together, so I remove the 512 and reboot.  Success!!!!

I now have a fully functional computer for michelle to play her new game on!  We were able to put the graphics all the way to the very max, without a single hiccup from the PC.  good news!  and it only took a week!