I recently looked into generating bitcoins, and that's not really true. Very little power goes into generating a successful bitcoin, true... But a LOT of power is wasted by failing to generate them. That's why it takes days, weeks or months (depending on processing power) to generate a successul bitcoin, on average.
You're confusing solving a block with creating bitcoins. The distinction is important (in my opinion), because it determines the reason all that processing power is needed.
A frequent mistake is to assume that all that processing power is used to make bitcoins hard to create. This is incorrect; the processing power is used to verify the block chain. The bitcoins created as part of each block are just a reward to make it profitable to participate in the network.
You're trying to win a lottery. With everyone racing to create a "solution" that fits the difficulty criteria there's no guarantee that you'll even win a block if you throw enough horsepower at it. A newcomer with a 900Mhz Pentium could find the correct solution on his first cycle.
