Is it time to say goodbye?

I bought my Acer Aspire laptop way back in 2004. As a top end model (priced around RM5k), it had certain specs I couldn't resist back then (for the Malaysian market, I mean):

15 inch WXGA LCD screen - compared to the old square screens on laptops back then, a wide screen was a joy to use. The colours and brightness were pretty good too.

ATI Radeon 9700 64mb - back in those days, most laptops weren't fitted with a dedicated graphics card. I'm not saying that I'm a gamer, but Need for speed Underground 2 and Red Alert 3 were among my favourite games my laptop could support. It could even support the Lord of the Rings multiplayer game, to some extent!

512 mb RAM - no one talked about having more RAM then.. so 512 MB was considered quite a handful since the programs didn't consume much memory and made my laptop sluggish. I since upgraded it to 1gb (512 x 2).. which seemed sufficient until a year ago. Now with Firefox 3, even logging into facebook seems sluggish!

stereo speakers - Okay, i'm not bragging about the latest Harman Kardon (did I get the spelling right?) or Altec Lansing speakers, but the laptop speakers from Acer laptops today are so soft, and can't be heard!

40gb hard drive - i'm not bragging about the size of the hard drive, but how long it has lasted. I've manage to retain the original FAT 32 (yup.. no NTFS) hard disk till today, and it still works! A computer technician told me once that most hard disks won't last beyond 3 years.

Alas dismay, my laptop screen has finally reached a stage where it's beyond repair. The LCD screen hinge was holding up for a few months, but since I got back to Kuching, the metal strip holding the screen to the laptop chassis has completely detached.

At my current workplace, I use my laptop heaps for AutoCAD and sketchup, it works even faster than the office computers (this should give an indication how bloody old the office PC's are, and my employers well, aren't exactly looking to have them replaced unfortunately). The office PCs are still using those large bulky square monitors too.

Repairing could be an option, but its above rm500, i'd be a pretty unwilling payer, since a 6-year-old laptop isn't worth much anyway.

It'll be hard to see my laptop retire, but if its time, it has to go, no doubt.

In the mean time, I'm officially.... laptop-less.

Somebody please hit me with a shovel!