Dell Inspiron M5010 :: Not Starting Up - Beeping 7 Times

My laptop is just under 3 years old (seems I've done well that it lasted this long!). 

I'm more than a little fed up as my old Dell was purchased in 2003 and is still working. I'm not hard on my laptop - it's never taken from home, maintained well and on my last de-frag (2 nights ago), it was in good health with only a quarter of the memory used.

I was told by Trading Standards that I should complain directly to Dell as under the Sale of Goods Act, I should expect something like this to last longer than this. They were interested to here that it seems to be a common fault in the US, too. 

What are the chances of getting this repaired? Will I have lost everything on it? How much will a repair cost? Should I just bite the bullet and buy a new laptop?