I think my old laptop died

So I have this Dell laptop that I bought right at the start of law school in 2003. It hasn't been perfect, but with my at-home super warranty, any problem I had was taken care of by an email or chat with Dell and then a guy that showed up at my house to replace the bad part(s). I bought an extra year on the warranty and that finally ended two months ago.
My laptop worked fine yesterday afternoon. Now today I went to fire it up and saw all kinds of weird characters. Even though I am out of warranty, I chatted with a Dell person in who-knows-where and they narrowed it down to the video card or motherboard. Bleh.
This laptop has been through the ringer. All of my law school notes were typed on it. I took every exam that I could on it (using Secure Exam). I typed the essays to my first bar exam on it (ran like a champ, no crashing or problems). Sure, it isn't pretty or flashing like newer laptops but it is worn and trusty like your favorite old t-shirt.