Laptop disasater has a happy ending!

Last Thursday I turned on my laptop and it would not boot....I panicked...the stupid thing isn't even 2 years old yet.
So I tried and tried again and nothing. Got Davide involved and my Saint of a husband was on the phone with Dell for over 3 hours....and all the idiot on the other line could tell him was to go to Best Buy and get the geek squad to try and save my data! (6 years worth of teaching materials among other things). Well that was not going to fly and that since it was still under partial warranty we would then have to re-install the operating system and take it from there....possibly sending it back to them....grrrr
The following day we called Davide's friend who said he could try to save the data and see where the problem really was. He came on Saturday, brought his cool little gadget and got all my stuff off the computer and onto Davides laptop and a USB drive! (he's my new hero).
We then re-installed the hard drive and vista, but it still crapped out.
Monday morning we got a person with a brain from Dell (very few and far between) and SHE, yup the woman knew what she was doing. She confirmed what our friend said, (the hard drive was fried and the operating system has major bugs) and sent us a new hard drive and the updated version of Vista.
Yesterday the stuff came in, and me and DH used our computer expertise and got it up and running.....so glad this is over....now I"m on my way to Best Buy to buy an external hard drive....I've learned my lesson and will be backing up my files religiously from now on.