My Macbook pro died two weeks ago, the day I shot a baptism. Uploaded the files, then the screen went black. Everything else seemed to be working fine, I could still do stuff, I just couldn't see what it was that I was doing.
I didn't get the chance to backup, (and didn't have that cable thingo to run to another machine / monitor) so just kept them on my CF cards.
Turned out it was the Nvidia component on the logic board that always dies, so got it all sorted under warranty (luckily with no data loss).
I've just bought a second computer now, so I can always work, never mind the backups, I was 5 days without a computer, which was a right royal pain.