Graphics Card blues

I am a tad stressy at the moment as my poor laptop has a poorly graphics card.

At some point something sprung off inside (this, of course, would have nothing to do with me urrr ...bumping it several times!) shot across the inside wedged itself in the cooling fan for the graphics card, snapped off to blades and managed to burn out th emotor - impressive huh?

Now it transpires that either it is just the fan - so when this is fixed the card will fine and wil no longer send my screen doolalay after 15mins or, it damaged the actual card and it has sadly ended it's uselfulness :( This has been stressful because: this first went wrong 2 minutes (and I do mean 2 minutes!) before the curtain went up on 'A Midsummer Night' Dream' and the laptop was controlling all the projections, and, I have no way of editing DVD's (because the annoying school video camera has no USB/firewire out and even the new laptop they have given me (#4 now!) isn't set up to rip DVD's) or sorting the website for whiteboard theatre out. Which in turn means that an awful lot of things for school aren't getting done ahhhh!!!

So between me and the lovely guy at technophobia in Keynsham, we have been trying to find a new card. This has proven rather tricky. Mostly because, although MXM graphics card are a great idea for those people who want to upgrade their grahics capabilities without replacing their entire laptop, no company relaly picked up on them and they are like gold dust to find. SO the search has so far included 5 2nd hand ones being sent over from the states to be tested (non of them worked!), me sending the original back to the company who assembled the laptop (they say they may be able to fix/replace the fan) and, in the latest escapade, me finiding a far more up to date model on eBay in....wait for it... Canada! So after I get paid this will be winging it's way across the ocean to me.

I have checked the compatibility charts - my model of Notebook is there and it says it is compatable - so there is no reason this shouldn't work. It does not, however, come with the fan or heatsink, so I have to make sure I get the other one back so we can nick the bits off that!

In a way I rather hoope the actual original card is damaged - this new card is about 4 times as powerful........4 times.....imagine Sims2 - or even Sims3.....*cough* I mean, imagine how much easier DVD editing will be..........