Not my month with computers...

So, I think I mentioned a bit ago about how my macbook (school laptop) totally crashed during the week before grades/report cards were due. Well, this weekend, my home computer decided to follow suit. Friday and Saturday when I tried to turn it on, the screen just went to power save automatically. So, on Saturday I took my computer into Computer Wise. The guy told me it was "either the motherboard or a bad video card." For those not so savvy with techie talk - crashed motherboard = buy new computer. Yes, I was sad. Not surprised though because my home computer is six years old. Well, after several phone calls today I have been told: the battery on the motherboard went out = $5, 2 new sticks of RAM = $5/each, 1 hr of labor = about $80, new case for external hard drive (bought Sept. 07 and it only worked for a month) = $40 but it gave it to me for $29.99 b/c it was their case on it that was bad (should've taken it in a year and a half ago while it was still under warranty!!!) = Grand Total just under $200. Oh goody! At least it wasn't a whole new computer! Bad side = they had to reformat my hard drive so I lost about a floppy disk worth of data (including some pix that I didn't have backed up yet :( ). Oh well, I guess it could have been a lot worse!! Hope you're having better luck than me in the technology department!!