My Powerbook is dead, now what?

Question

I bought my Powerbook in June 2002. I have used this computer for so long but it started acting up and so for Christmas, "Santa" gave me an external drive and I backed everything up.
This week, my laptop died. In a really horrible, nasty way. I started up in single user mode and did "fsck" and got a "hard drive can not be repaired". Took it to the Apple store and they confirmed, definitely a dead hard drive and I would have to replace.
Now, before I do anything, I want to understand my options. I use this computer for iTunes (20GM iPod), storing Photos, email, web, Word, Excel, etc (basic stuff). I do want to use it to start working on digital scrapbooks with Adobe Photoshop Elements. This means a lot of .jpg files will be open at once and playing around with them. Probably while I go online to read how someone did something.
I upgraded to Tiger (I am not sure what version what the last I was up to because I have automatic updates). I upgraded the memory but I can't look at all my specs right now (obviously).
One thing I would like to have is wireless capability to use in places like coffee houses so I don't have to take the work junk computer I have to surf remotely.
Should I go ahead and replace the hard drive to put this computer back together as my primary computer (and if so, how big)? Should I add a wireless card too? Or should I get a desktop and then keep this laptop around and maybe replace things when I have a little more cash? OR, realize that I am going to eventually have to buy a better computer and get another laptop? If so, what to do with this one?
I am not a complete idiot when it comes to computers but I am certainly not up to speed right now on what's out there. I do need something in the next few weeks though because my iPod is the DJ for my wedding on April 1, 2006 and right now, that is not looking so good!
Powerbook Titanium DVI   Mac OS X (10.4)  

Answer 1

Hi again, jenninbel. There is always a chance that more than one thing is wrong with a computer, but the gradual decline and failure of a hard drive would certainly explain, all by itself, what you've experienced.
A 7200-RPM drive will be noticeably faster reading and writing large amounts of data than a 5400-RPM drive. Opening and saving ordinary small files is so fast in either case that you'd probably never notice a difference, unless you work normally with applications that routinely read and write hundreds of megabytes, or even gigabytes, of data. You currently have to pay a sizable premium for 7200-RPM drives, particularly those of 100GB and more. If you do a lot of heavy image-processing, professional audio, or digital-video work, a faster drive may be worth paying for. But if your work involves a lot of that sort of thing, your Powerbook's internal drive will never be large enough to serve as your primary drive for long, and your Powerbook's processor won't be fast enough to serve your needs for long, either.
As to brands, you'll hear different things from different people. Look at the manufacturer's warranty, above all. The chief advantage of buying and installing a drive yourself instead of having Apple install one for you is that you'll get the original manufacturer's warranty of 3-5 years on it, rather than 90 days (which is all you'd get from Apple, even if Apple were installing exactly the same drive). Given a long warranty, it may matter a lot less what brand you buy than how good your backup strategy is and how religiously you use it. Any drive can fail, and used long enough, every drive will. You don't want to lose your data, whether your drive fails after seven days or seven years. The only brand I urge you to avoid is Western Digital, which just doesn't have a very good reputation for longevity, warranty or no warranty.