Just Great

Yesterday my computer began beeping due to low battery power. That was not unusual except for the fact that it was plugged into the wall, and nomatter what I did the power kept depleting. Quickly it became unusable. Hoping it might be a bad AC adapter as the connection was a little loose, I went to the store. I asked around to see if they would check out my situation (I brought my computer) and they reassured me it was not the adapter. What probably happened is that I bumped the input in just the right way to break the connection to the motherboard. Unless the break can be soldered together I'm looking at paying $690 for a new motherboard. For that price I might as well spend $1000 and get a new laptop instead. Of course I have neither $690 nor $1000 so I'm really hoping the good people at Dell can fix it. In any event I'll be using my father's desktop for the next month. This really, really sucks. Anyone got any good ideas?