Hank...Computer questions?

[FlintTony]

My Dell laptop was slow, took a long time to get going, mouse wasn't acting right. A black box with some gooffy assed writing would pop up every now and then. Kept having to re-start it to get it going. It is about 3 years old. I was doing a "system restore" on it. It stalled out and the blue circle just kept spinning. I shut the bitch down by holding the power button for about 10 seconds. When i tried to start it again, all I got was a black screen with an arrow. I tried all kinds of shit to get it going. No luck, as I have no idea what I'm actually doing. Took it to the repair joint. He says it is "corupted very bad" and has to install all new stuff. He has had it for 6 days and says it is still updating. When it gets done with that, he has to put the junk from the little brain thing that I transfered all the shit from the computer to. I think it's called an external hard drive. Question is should i just throw the piece of shit in the swamp and buy a new one? He is charging me 160 bucks for all this repair.