I'm a college student, and this past spring, my MacBook died without warning or explanation right before finals week. I took it to the Genius Bar, and they told me it would be $800 for an in store repair, $300 if they shipped it out for repair.
I couldn't afford either option, and I desperately needed a computer because I really did not want to spend finals week typing all my papers in the computer lab. I went down to Goodwill with the cash I had, because they sell old Macs and I wanted anything that would let me write in the peace of my own room. I settled on a 600MHz Graphite iMac G3 running Tiger with 512MB of Ram. It was a tough purchase- I knew that I would be better off saving the money and putting it towards the cost of repairing my MacBook. However, I decided I would just have to eat the cost of the iMac purchase for the sake of my sanity during finals week, and figured that I could hand the computer down to a younger sibling after my MacBook was fixed.
I brought the iMac home on the bus, fired it up, and I am thrilled to say that its running beautifully; it runs almost as fast as the MacBook for my daily tasks! (Email, iTunes, word processing, web.) I actually like the iMac better than my MacBook; the industrial design is stunning, and I won't be giving it up even once my MacBook is fixed later this summer. It saved me during finals, and I feel like you're forever bonded to a computer once you have the experience of hauling it across town in a cardboard box via public transportation haha.