Sometimes saving a few bucks is no savings at all.

I recently decided to purchase King's Bounty: The Legend.

I compared prices between Steam and Amazon and found that Amazon was selling the boxed version for $15 less than the Steam version.

So the next thing I did was look for differences that would warrant paying the Steam price. In particular, I looked for details on the DRM.

Reviewers said the Steam version used the Steam system (which I love) and the retail version used a CD check with Securom. (The EU versions had the dreaded Starforce DRM.) Reviewers said no problem with the CD check so I bought it.

I waited to get the box. When I got the box, I installed it in Windows7 x64 and the game ran fine.

But what about patches? I didnt want to play the game for a while, then find I needed a patch which invalidated my save game.

The game does not include its own patch mechanism (like Steam does). The game did not have an "update" button or a link to their website. I did some searching and found the website which contained no less than 3 versions of the same patch number... Hmmm. A totally ghetto website with no explanation of the patch differences.

I tried to look at the release notes of the first one but it was in a Word document!! I dont have Office on this PC -- which is why everyone else puts notes in a text file or a PDF.

So I picked another patch version. Downloaded it.

And it would not install. It was a .rar file which is not supported on Windows7. To get this patch, I would need to purchase software that could unpack .rar files. So now I am off to get a demo version which will last for this game.

Once that was finished, I install the patch.

And now the game wont run. It no longer detects the CD in the DVD drive. The mild Securom DRM system has now invalidated my retail copy of the game.

At this point, I have been swearing for a long time. I ask myself: "Why on earth did I think I would save some money by not using Steam?" With Steam I would have had the game installed, patched and running days ago. With the CD copy, I find myself spending much more than $15 in my time and frustration...

The good news is that I was able to uninstall the game, then reinstall it and play it successfully without being patched. I lose out on the many bug fixes but at least I can play it.

I had gotten so used to the convenience of Steam, I had forgotten what a pain it is to deal with retail software on a disc.

Steam is one of the many experiences in software where you dont realize how unhappy you were until you start using a different product and are forced to go back to what you used to do. It is an "aha!" moment that makes perfect sense when it happens to you but is very hard to convince people who are still doing the old way.

I have had several of these aha- moments in recent years. I get a real smile when other people tell me about their moment of clarity, "NOW I understand what you were talking about....". But most of the time, I get rather frustrated trying to convince old dogs to learn new tricks.

Next time, I think I will be a little wiser about the Amazon option.