Death of my laptop

My laptop of 3 and half years is now dead. Most components are working, but the keyboard apparently has one or more stuck keys that I can't fix. As usually, the cheapest component on a laptop is the first to break. First it's the connector to the charger, then it's the keyboard. So far, I haven't been able to disable it and use a USB keyboard. When I disable it in Windows, windows xp restarts, and installs the keyboard upon restart. If I can't find a work around soon, the laptop is gone.

But first thing first, I need to buy a portable harddrive, to backup my laptop while I can get to my stuff. Lesson learned? My next laptop will be a heavy one, not a flimsy light one.