Laptop broke

[a completely inoffensive name]

My laptop broke. Been using a Dell studio xps for almost 4 years. Been using very heavily with school and games. Roughly on 12-16 hours every day since I got it. My right arrow button broke off just a few hours ago during usage (the plastic piece at least) and now whenever I press the button or any of the buttons near it, the right button acts as if I am holding it down even though you can see the switch and it is not pressed down in any way. My laptop won't load the OS because the button goes off and suddenly on boot up it halts and begins to beep very loudly. I am able to use it now because I figured out that the spamming ends just by pressing any other button that still functions not located near the right arrow button. So I just spammed random keys on boot up and it loaded just fine. Currently I have my external keyboard plugged in and that works fine and I am backing everything up just in case.

My plan is to separate my gaming from my work, so I am going to Fry's tomorrow to hopefully buy a workstation that can run MATLAB and last a long time. Then once my summer break starts I am going to build my own desktop for the purpose of gaming.

So first thing first, does anyone have any tips on my current problem and what is a good work laptop capable of running MATLAB that is built like a tank. Preferably on the few hundred dollar range.

Many thanks to anyone who can help.

EDIT: I am going to take the laptop to a repair place first just so I can confirm that it is a hardware problem with the keyboard, but I would rather still have a separate laptop just for my work and other important tasks.

[TinCow]

If it's just the keyboard, you can save the laptop. The keyboard itself is one of the easier bits to replace on a laptop. If you're handy with a screwdriver, you can disassemble the laptop and remove the keyboard without too many problems. Then just buy a replacement keyboard, plug it in, and screw everything back together. Replacement parts like that are pretty cheap. Dunno if this is the proper model, but even if not it should be evidence of how cheap the repair can be:
http://www.parts-people.com/index.ph...n=item&id=6450

[Xiahou]

I've always had a thing for ThinkPads. They're built solid and just seem to keep going and going.

In fact, I'm typing this on a Thinkpad R61 that was made in 2007. I got it for free from a coworker, since it had a smashed screen and bad hard drive, but I was able to replace both for practically nothing and I've been using it for almost 3 years now. HD video turns into a slideshow, and its useless for most gaming- but it runs Windows7 and is perfect for surfing, email, office, ect.

So anyway, if you're feeling adventurous, I know you can find similar laptops on Ebay very inexpensively. It doesn't look like MATLAB has very demanding system requirements- but I'll leave that to you to determine....

Also, like TinCow said, keyboards are usually pretty straightforward to replace. So you should definitely look into saving your current laptop.