He had to get a new laptop because of trouble with internet connection? That's pretty wasteful, especially since fixing the computer is much cheaper than replacing it. If his connection was mainly wireless, then it was probably just a broken WLAN card/adapter. He could've gotten a USB wireless adapter from best buy and use a wired connection (If it didn't come with a disk) to install the needed drivers. I got mine for about $30, but there are cheaper ones than that!