Mother Bored!

Two years ago Adam bought me a very nice HP laptop. It was beautiful. It had a large 17 inch screen, the NEW windows Vista, a 10 key pad, all the bells and whistles. I was so excited. It was one of the most beautiful things I owned. Eleven months into my ownership it started to have problems. I gave HP a call and they went through a few things with me and decided that my motherboard was bad. They sent me a box overnight by Fedex. I put my beloved laptop inside with an orange sticky note with my login password and sealed it with a kiss.
It was gone 10 days. It was a long 10 days.
But... it came back and was working great (except the vista problems). I used it for another 13 months and then... the same things started happening.
I called HP. They said for 49.00 I could call them and ask them as many questions I wanted for 14 whole days! I said "nevermind".
I took it to PC Laptops, they ran a few tests for free! The diagnosis was what I didn't want to hear, but already knew. The motherboard is dead. I can order a new one from HP for about 500-600 dollars. Wow!
So I have been living without it for about three weeks now. I have broken my habit of blog surfing, and checking email 100 times a day. I quit shopping online cold turkey. That was hard, but I did it.
Now I am in discussions with Adam on buying a new laptop/desktop. When should we do it? How much is it going to cost? What should we buy? It is driving Adam crazy that he can't send me an email in the middle of the day, or chat with me via instant message. (how we communicate 80% of the time!)
I am leaning toward waiting, and spending the money finishing the basement. I am thinking my childrens lives are more important than a computer. And if they don't get somewhere new to play that is not under my feet, I am going to go crazy mad. Who knows if I will be able to hold out long enough with no computer, but I think I am going to give it a try. I have seen the bottom of my sink, and I have swept up crumbs off the floor more in the last three weeks than I have in the last three months.
It kinda feels nice.