Thanks for your replies and comments
But, it seems, the problem isn't that uncommon in MacBook Pros from that time:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4266922
That's not necessarily a sign of a widespread problem of that particular model. I can guarantee you there is a discussion about a problem someone somewhere had with nearly every Mac ever made, and that discussion has a bare handful of people saying they had a problem. Now Apple has made some lemons, don't get me wrong, and they have done out-of-warranty repairs for many of them. The discussions on Apple's forums for THOSE models run into dozens of pages!
The cost of repair (a new logic board and installation) is €590 ... and a new MacBook Pro 13'' (the cheapest one, the one without Retina and without SSD) is €1060.
Thus I don't know if it is worth paying €590 to have a 4-years-old computer. But, on the other hand, this new MacBook Pro 13'' is not much better than my 4-years-old one (500GB of disk space instead of 250GB, 1600MHz RAM memories instead of 1066MHz (but the same 4GB) and 2.5GHz processor instead of 2.4GHz).
What are your opinions?
Not much better? Oh that is soooo wrong. You are looking at the bare surface specs, something that most PC manufacturers prey on. There are many and major improvements to the underlying hardware, and the benchmarks show it. For a 2010 13" MBP, t
he Geekbench scores are:
Geekbench 2 (32): 3346 Geekbench 2 (64): 3661
Geekbench 3 (32): 1306 Geekbench 3 (32): 2166
Geekbench 3 (64): 1402 Geekbench 3 (64): 2315
For the 2014:
Geekbench 2 (32): 7621 Geekbench 2 (64): 8628
Geekbench 3 (32): 2820 Geekbench 3 (32): 5849
Geekbench 3 (64): 3127 Geekbench 3 (64): 6602
I'm pretty sure that double to triple the performance is indeed much better.
As for what to do in your case, I for one wouldn't put the money into fixing it. If it breaks again in 1-2 years, you are back where you were. I know this is discouraging, but this is the risk with electronics in general. Some people get a bad draw. For it to have lasted as long as it did, quite frankly that's a pretty good sign that whatever has caused it to start failing may be a consequence of environment, not a defect. Perhaps a little of both. Laptops are often exposed to a lot of abuse, unintentional perhaps, but they get toted and tossed around a lot. If it's been used and pushed hard, that can take an additional toll. It's the same risk and same thing with any laptop, no matter who makes it.