Beats me why Acer wants $300 to replace the least expensive part of the machine.  You can buy plastic case parts (see here for example).  Of course, I can't say how easy it would be to do the fiddly work of fitting them, but it's a possibility.

Sorry, Still works fine, was in a hurry.

-Twilight Storm

I traded it in for a HP DV9000 notebook. Now I have to worry about a faulty video card. I wonder if this model had issues. Another question comes to mind. Should I get Windows Vista and suffer the yucky woes of that OS or use a pirated copy of 7 until I can get a copy from school...

Yucky woes versus pirated copy. Hmmmm tough choice. The pirated copy you may or may not be able to activate unless of course it already is. Then there's a possibility of yucky woes with that. Kinda like bein' caught between a rock and a hard place.

Guys...you know the rules about discussing pirated software.

Kona, don't you have a copy of Windows 7? Try installing it with your CD key. The key resets every 90 days so if it's been more than that since your last install, you're good.

No I don't have a legit copy of 7. The one I have is a copy of a friends so I really don't want to use it. This machine gets a 4.5 score with Vista. I have 3 GB RAM. Is Vista really that bad or what should I do?

Run Vista ... The service packs fixed up a lot of issues with it (although I still use the CD to sit my coffee mug on), run it as raw as you can, get Win7 when you can afford it.

I had nothing but problems with Vista, but there are users who didn't.

Kona...are you planning to stay on this site or not?

You know full well we have a zero tolerance for warez use.

I'm planning on staying. After all I've been here some time.

I will stick to Vista. seems to run just as fast as 7 on this setup and I'm all legit with this OS. Will look into how much my college sells 7 for.

Now I am still wondering if this model has any video issues like the DV6000 does. If so I may think about getting something newer sooner.

DON"T steal   A.K.A. pirate

No, Vista is not that bad.  Just because a few journalist and armchair experts said so early in the piece, don't make it so.  I currently have Vista Home Premium SP3 running on this rig in a dual boot configuration with Win 7, and I can honestly say that I can hardly tell the difference, performance-wise. 

Besides, why run the risk of using a pirated copy of Win 7?  Apart from the zero tolerance thingy that Jafo alluded to, I read a few days ago that law enforcement in the US has been visiting the homes of people and seizing machines that MS detected as running illegitimate copies of Windows and Office. 

Vista is better than a pirated copy of Windows 7. (If you can't say something nice about an OS, do not say anything at all).

And that is all I have to say about Vista.

Vista I'd rather go down a razor filled slide naked

I've been running Vista since the first public beta and I have never found it to be the pig some people claim it to be, and thus have nothing bad to say about it.  In fact, I quite like using it... especially in 64 bit and the way I have it set up to suit myself.  I'm using Tweak Vista to eliminate the annoying quirks of UAC, for example], and for me it is more than just usable. As stated above, I found little or no difference in performance  between Vista and Win 7 on this machine... though I'd say the recent addition of a SSD would have upped the performance of Win 7 somewhat.

Why dual boot between Vista and Win 7?  I like to  keep Vista on my rig for MS Office, Photoshop, PSP and other art/photo manipulation programs, and Win 7 for music and video editing, etc.  Hence I've not bloated either OS with too many programs all at once and therefore keep a sleek fast machine with fewer registry nightmares.