Laptop Woes

I've been considering getting a new laptop for a little while now as my ageing Vista driven Acer is taking an age to load up, and struggles with some tasks and anyway I fancied a new computer. 

Things were brought to a head last night when it finally gave up the ghost. Each time it went through the startup, it would stop and switch itself off.  I tried all the usual things, F4, recovery discs etc etc to no avail.

So last night I browsed available, suitable laptops within my price range, and today I took the hard drive out of the kaput computer and managed to copy it. This was not strictly necessary as I use external discs for data and backup but it's a safety net in case I need anything. I would have removed the hard drive before before disposing of it anyway.

Originally I was going to pass this laptop on toTom, but I guess he's going to have to carry on with his old Dell for a while longer.

btw the dead computer is the one at the back, I'm using Ann's ASUS to backup the HDD to the backup drive.