Broken Laptop Screen!

It looks awful, doesn't it? Well, at least the hard drive is fine--I am busy trying to save all of my information before I decide if I will send it away for repair or not. I can only blame myself for this one--I tripped while carrying it and dropped it! :( I am ALWAYS worrying about this happening--especially when my teens use my laptop. But when it DID happen, it was MY fault! My son and daughter were both disappointed about the laptop being "out of commission," but they were relieved that they did NOT have a hand in its demise. About this time last year, the hard drive crashed and one of them MAY have been to blame--there was a series of events that led up to the final crash, and a virus may have been downloaded. I had to send my laptop away for repair, and it wasn't an inexpensive endeavor. Once it was returned in working order, I was more reluctant to let them use it--they have access to a perfectly fine Dell desktop. In fact, for a while, I labeled the desktop as the "family computer," and the laptop as "my computer." Sure, things can happen--but teens aren't known to be as cautious about things as adults--and then THIS adult (ME!) goes and drops the laptop!! Yeah, real cautious, huh?!! Anyway, so far, the quotes I have received have been quite high--don't know if it is worth it: it is NOT a high-end brand anyway and not worth as much as other laptops, it is about 3 years old, and the costs of getting this laptop repaired more than once is quickly adding up to the cost of purchasing a new computer. I had planned on buying a new laptop sometime next year and giving THIS one to my teens--now it is worthless unless I get the screen repaired. The pros and cons of repairing/upgrading/replacing electronics can be tough to discern--sometimes it is worth it to try to improve a current product, and other times it makes more sense to just replace it with a newer and better product. I will weigh the pros and cons a bit longer before I decide what to do. In the meantime, I discovered that I can plug my desktop monitor into my laptop and use it that way. Of course, that totally elminates the reason I like laptops--portability. I am going to save everything on my hard drive and back it up on discs so that at least I don't feel that all is lost. But I don't think it will be long before I begin missing the convenience of carrying a laptop wherever I want to go. Until then, I will hook it up to my desktop monitor to use it. In fact, I have an OLD monitor that I can use so that I won't be taking up space at our family desktop. It is huge--that really big and bulky kind from the 90s--but it will work for what I need to do. I am still frustrated with myself for causing these problems in the first place--if only I hadn't dropped my laptop! My teens are almost as disappointed as I am--they liked the convenience of checking their email on a whim from anywhere in the house--now they have to be anchored to a desk. Funny how much times have changed--I couldn't have even imagined any of this technology when I was a teen. Now, these things have almost become as important to us as our basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Well, not THAT important--but to my teens, you would THINK that technology rates that high on the list of necessities in life! :)