PC Gone Bye-Bye

Just a few days ago, I'd been chatting to Loz about backing up PC's. I hadn't bothered to back anything up recently, I casually mentioned.

Well, the foreshadowing couldn't have been more clear if there had been a little grim reaper dancing on top of my monitor.

Of course, my computer died two days later -- actually, it's not really dead, but it's deathly ill -- like a patient slipping in and out of a coma.

It starts up in the morning as good as new, but after an increasingly shorter amount of time, it restarts without warning. And then it gives me weird error messages.

I discussed the problem with the tech desk at PC World, and they said it must be a hardware problem -- since it seems to cut out no matter what I'm doing. What is more, since my Sony is all-in-one, it's as cumbersome as a desktop machine, but as serviceable as a laptop -- meaning it has to be serviced by Sony.

So, now I'm debating if I shouldn't just buy a laptop which I've been wanting/needing for some time now. And if I do get one, should I get a top of the line model, with all the bells and whistles? Or should I get the cheapest one possible just to hold me over until I can get my PC repaired.

Also -- if I do send my PC off to be services, what about the 160 GB of files on my harddrive? I'm not sure I trust Sony to not wipe my harddrive clean. Should I buy a new external drive and try to use the 10 minutes of daily up-time to backup my files?

Oh yeah ... and who's paying for all this?

Ugh.