Ok fine... I agree that a computer requires $$ to purchase and keep operating... but to expect that people will go to councles because they are spending $500/yr on upgraded video card is ridiculous.
I purchased my $2000 Dell 8200 4 years ago. It's ready for a complete refresh (replacement)... but it still meets the recommended requirements, and the only thing that I have had to do is replace my graphic's card once ($120 9600SE).
If you figure that the $500 21" Trition monitor will last another 2 years, that means that I have spent about $500/year on my pc... not $500/year on just my GPU. Even if I was going to buy a pc purely for office/email use, I would be spending $100/year ($500 whitebox, replaced every 5 years)... so the cost of my gaming is $400/year extra (or $1.10 a day... much less than I spend on cable).
Sure, I agree... I'm not running HL2 at max res.... but it's still has better graphics that the PS2.
I'm not hardcore games with money to burn... I just like games... and I think that $500/year to play on the PC (better graphics, storylines, ect) when I'm going to use that machine anyway for other uses (business, email, documents, etc) is a fairly efficent use of money.