Out of Warranty

The volume controls for my Dell have been dead for a bit. Fortunately, that's only a minor inconvenience, since the volume controls on a Dell Latitude D600 are directly on the motherboard and replacing that is expensive.

But now the hinges on the case are starting to act up as well.

I'm starting to think about a new laptop, since it would be good to pin that down before a more catastrophic failure. Any recommendations? Bonus points if I can just swap the hard drive in from my old laptop. Since I just upgraded that recently, it should still be good for another while, and reinstalling all my programs would be a pain. I may still stick with Dell, especially since I get a discount with them through my employer.

Laptop Options

Replacement hinges + spares = $40 (getting these now... maybe the extra $15 for spares I won't necessarily need was a bad idea, though; I hope this will be sufficient for me to make repairs and that the problem isn't something else that I'm missing)

Refurbished laptop in my current model = $300 (may be a cost-effective option if major repairs would be required)

New laptop = ~$600-1000 (people have suggested a lot of options, after some exploration HP seems to offer some of the best deals)

(The HP dv4z series seems the best option if I want something high-end-ish. I can get 4G of memory and the highest processor upgrade and still have it under $1k. And even the lowest processor option beats my current setup.)

Update: I can also extend my warranty through the end of July for $300 ($100 of that is because it expired previously). I should have considered that earlier, but the warranty expired before I had the chance to think it over; I hadn't realized the warranty term started in late July since I didn't originally receive my laptop until late August or early September.