Any opinions on if I should repair my old powerbook or just buy a new one?

Question

Alright, here's the situation.
I have a Tipowerbook 867 (upgraded to 512 ram) that's a bit over two and a half years old. Over this two plus year period, I have used this powerbook quite a lot, pretty much every single day for several hours at a minimum. Well, the other day when I was picking it up off a chair, it half slipped out of my hand, and before I could catch it the left hinge hit the floor pretty good, and the little part of the hinge that goes up into the display is now pulled out, and the hinge does not rotate. This also exacerbated some small stress cracks in the light grey outer case of the bottom part right beneath the same hinge. Apple gave me a quote of about 600 dollars to fix it. I also plan to call around to some third party places to see if they can do it cheaper, but do not expect it to be less then 3-400 to get it fixed. If I did get it fixed, I would also want to buy a new battery as well (a cost of around $120), as the one I have currently is at 581 cycles, and does not last very long any more. This computer also has little things wrong that don't bother me overly much, but I still notice from time to time, like 2 or 3 little scratches on the screen and one longer one, plus it seems to have gained a dead pixel or two recently.
Now, the decision I'm trying to make is whether it would be better to get this one repaired, or whether to just try and sell it for whatever it gets (a couple hundred dollars plus, I figure?), and buy one of the new 1.67ghz modals for $1899 (including apple care)taxa gig of ram.
If I got the current one repaired, I could see it lasting another 6 months or year, but probably not longer then that. The advantages I see in the new one are:
Double the processor speed,
Quadruple the graphics card memory,
Triple the ram (I sometimes feel like this one has too little, but don't want to put more in it cause I'd have to trash one of the sticks in it, which reduces the net gain quite a bit, so I figure I'll just stick another gig in the new one, if I get it)
the bigger screen res (I use the entire screen most of the time currently, and I have good eyesight, so I see this as a good thing)
The larger HD (not a big deal, but I have been running into the upper limit of this one from time to time, but not without crap I can delete to free up space)
The stuff like the firewire 800 port, usb 2.0 port, and airport extreme card I see as nice, but not a real big deal to me, as I probably wouldn't get much use out of them in the near future.
The two finger scrolling thing might be helpful, but I use a little shareware program called sidetrack currently, which gives me similar results.
The powerbooks were updated recently, and so will probably remain current a little bit longer.
It seems like a decent time in regard to the intel transition, since most (or at least some) of the bugs and incompatibilities will probably be worked out by the time I need to buy a new one.
So, I see lots of pluses to getting a new one, but am not sure if there are 13 or 14 hundred dollars worth of plusses.
If I do get a new computer, it will definitely be a powerbook, because I love being able to spend most of my time on the computer from my bed, and also being able to go upstairs and sit next to my dad on the couch and surf the web from there, and an ibook wouldn't do it for me, since I use the entire screen currently for various programs.
The programs that I use most frequently are things like safari, ichat, mail, word, etc, but I do acquire a penchant for game playing from time to time, and suspect that this might make a resurgence if I did buy a new one--it would be nice to be able to play something like America's Army or UT2k4 with an actually playable frame rate (I don't even really care about the quality of the graphics, as long as it's playable).
I also have considered trying out things like 3d modeling and messing about with imovie to see what I came up with, but am not sure how much those would benefit from the new computer.
I am currently a freshman at a local junior college, and think it's fairly likely that I'll transfer to a four year collage down the road in 2-3 years.
So basically, my decision comes down to this: Do I repair this one, and hope it lasts 6-12 months more, at which point I probably buy the current 15" powerbook, or do I spring for the new one now, and hope it serves my needs for the next 3 or so years down the road.
I'm sort of drawn to the new one, but also can't see anything terribly wrong with this one, and think that it might serve the majority of my needs (but possibly fewer of my wants) for a year or so to come.
The money is not a huge issue to me, I'll have to pay it sometime, and I was already planning to try to get a side job refereeing fencing tournaments for a bit of extra cash.
The way I lean on this decision depends on when you ask me, it varies from really deciding that I'd like and enjoy the new one to feeling like it would be kind of silly and it would be better to wait, but not liking having to repair this one to gain back what I already had.
Anybody have any helpful suggestions or comments that might help to tip me one direction or the other?
-Larry
P.S. Thanks for reading my somewhat long winded post, I'm the kind of person who really likes trying to quantify everything I can, and so I did.

Answer 1

Ok.
For starters, there is a Titanium thread, where you can get some more help, but my main Mac is a Ti, so let's get to it.
the hinge does not rotate
This is common on older TiBooks. I pray everytime I open mine.
to be less then 3-400 to get it fixed
Seems about right.
sell it for whatever it gets
Ebay is the place to go for current value on older technology. You will get the best price there as well. Look around eBay for similar models, with hinge damage like yours.
Frankly, the new Powerbooks are really nice. My roomate has one, and they are much studier than these TiBooks. You will not be disappointed. I would wait until MacExpo the 2nd week of January to see what Apple has to pull out of their hat as far as possible Powerbook or iBook options. No one knows for sure what--if any--new products will be released in the near future.
Larry, what do you do on the Mac? What do you need from it? You can pick up an iBook for as little as $999. You can also look online at the Apple Store refurbs (A link on the Apple Store site will take you there) for cheaper models.
I think your Ti has seen a good life... I vote for moving on.
iSMH