Laptop Question

So I accidentally sent my laptop to sleep while it was shutting down, and now it won't boot. According to the Vista support page, this is a known problem with Vista and the solution is to wipe the hard drive and reinstall. I'm more than willing to do this, but first I really, really want to get the data off. Some of it is backed up, a lot of it has been sent back and forth in e-mails and could be reconstructed, but I have files for work, pictures, music, and - to me most important - my current novel work in progress unbacked up. I know a few of you have had similar issues - what companies did you find that could get the data off? Have any of you used these recovery things? How did it go? Was it expensive?

Any help is vastly appreciated. The thought of losing almost 15k of work in progress brings tears to my eyes, not to mention all the other data - at least most of the rest is backed up...