Sorry to hear you had a bad IT experience. [br]
The wires for the antenna you can usually find for that laptop pretty cheap. The front digitizer can be popped off. [br]
You can do so by taking a thin flathead screw driver and prying around the edges of the plastic bezel and the back LCD cover. [br]
Take a look at the antenna part and see if there is a part number or model to do a search and find one of the exact same model.