Another one bites the dust...

Looks like the hard drive in my laptop has given up the ghost... it's a very old machine, so it's time was due, and today it just refused to start up. I'd not used it for much actual computing... mostly as a DVD player, so I doubt it's worth repairing, because even with a working hard drive, it wasn't much use for anything. Maybe this is the final nudge for me to get a real laptop, especially before all the non-glossy screen Macs sell out. What is with Apple and these cheeseball glossy screens? Is that really what the market wants?

On Edit... tried restarting the old laptop, and lo and behold, it started up. Wonder if it might have just been overheated or something? Well, it's still useless for much more than watching DVDs, so it will still serve a purpose. :)

On another front, have an external hard drive that crashed a while ago, and I've been shopping around a little for data recovery services, but the gamut is so huge (from under $300 to more than $3000) I don't know which way to go on it. Any of you loyal readers out there have a good (or bad) experience to share about a drive recovery service?