Mobo/HDD confusion

I did a bad thing. I spilled hot chocolate on my 1706-86U-B Lenovo Thinkpad X60, and now I need to get the motherboard and bunches of other things replaced. Luckily, the hard drive is fine. I'm being quoted ~$1000 from bunches of repair shops and am leaning towards just buying a new Thinkpad altogether just on the basis of cost (ouch).

The most important thing to me is that all programs and files on my current laptop be preserved. A friend tells me that, if I get a laptop with the same motherboard as my current laptop, I should have no problem accessing the same programs, etc. Is this true?

Thanks in advance for your time and help!!

to an extent. chances are the new laptop you buy will not have the same mobo in it. you could still put the old hdd in the new laptop; however, you may run into problems with windows activation, or even worse, windows may not even boot at all. if that happens, you will need a windows disc and you will need to perform a repair install, then reinstall all the drivers for the new laptop. that should fix the problem.

my advice would be to just reinstall your programs on to the new laptop and buy an adapter to get your data off your old hdd on to your new hdd.