I finally managed to get all the data off the drive all nicely backed up, and the laptop was setup to be collected for a little R&R, which will fix it, I hope.
Now, the guy I was talking to was clearly an Irish guy, and all the costings are given in Euros and in Pounds, so I was thinking that it's was off to Cork or somewhere like that. I was quite suprised that it's actually off to Sony's Alsace plant for some French lovin'.
Checking on DHL's website shows that it arrived early this morning - who know's it might be back here in just over a week... or not if there's a strike or some such...