Laptop Woe

My beloved laptop, also known as "the machine that has every document I hold dear in its thrall", is beginning to exhibit unnatural behaviour, like suddenly turning oddly grey-green and becoming unresponsive. Why, yes, it's a PC*. What to do?

Option 1: Get it fixed. However, the problem is quite sporadic, and shows up more-or-less every few weeks. Case in point: the laptop's working now.
Option 2: Get a new laptop. But you know, poor undergraduate student here, and since it wasn't that long ago that the university took my tuition...
Option 3: Do nothing, and hope it lasts for a few more months.

Some of my stuff is backed up, but I do write my assignments on a computer, and I can hardly back up everything every single day.

(Yes, I am inclined towards Option 3. Maybe when laptops are actually on sale around here I'll get a new laptop...)

*Let's not go into the Macs vs. PC vs. Linux variant argument here; I use Windows mainly because I am used to it, and there's a few programs that are Windows only. Dammit, I was hoping the laptop will hold out until Windows 7 is released so I can bypass Vista. (Laptop runs Windows XP.)