Poor laptop. When you are financially situated to buy a new computer, I highly recommend finding someone affiliated with an academic institution, in order to buy on discount. (I'd offer to do that for you, but my current location makes that kind of cumbersome.) There's also the possibility of getting a refurbished machine - I got one back in 2003, and it ran beautifully for years - in fact, it still runs just fine, but it's slow for up to date software and such.
At least so much else seems to be going right lately?