[Aka]

Depending on what's wrong with it, you could fix it. It depends on what you're willing to do. My friend picked up a really nice laptop for like $150 because it was "dead". Mean while he just soldiered the power connector back on and it works fine.

Also, I just bought a 3 year old laptop, a Sharp MM10 with a 1 GHz Transmeta. There's nothing wrong with a 3 year old laptop if you can get it working.

Also, I doubt it'll cost $700+ for a new motherboard, check on eBay or something maybe you can find another laptop with something else broken for cheap, and just swap parts.

I dunno, ideas.