I finally splurged on a new PC. A brand spankin-refurbished Intel Core 2 Duo machine with 4 gigs RAM, 1TB hard drive and a Radeon HD6450 video card; all from Walmart.com for under 200 bucks! (well, it was an overtime paycheck, so we bought 3 of them)
Oh, she was a beaut... I say "was" because out of the 3 machines we got, mine was the one that went toes-up (I returned it and ordered a replacement as soon as I figured out it was actually broken, and not a fault of the OS). To be expected, it being a refurb and all, but it IS an upgrade from what I had. So... NO I didn't resist the temptation, but I DID upgrade to what I could afford.