1) Working with Dell to get a restoration CD. Hopefully they'll cough one up without charging an arm and a leg (you'd be surprised).
2) The hard drive itself seems to be OK. I spent some money at Circuit City to buy a SATA to USB thing and have been able to pull data off with no problems.
3) Need to get ethernet card drivers for Dante-laptop, just so I have
something to check email with at home.
Being without the computer is so weird...