Acer :: Aspire 5536

I've just bought one of these as a "refurbished" item and have very mixed feelings.

The good thing is it seems to be quite a nice machine for basic computing.

The bad things include:

1. It has no ExpressCard port. I researched extensively prior to purchase, and most sites listing this model say it has such a slot. The Acer site doesn't, but that site doesn't mention the slot on my AS 2920. I really need such a slot to use my firewire card. Is there a guide anywhere to what the numbers and letters mean after the main Acer type number?

2. It came with Vista, but I thought it might be upgradeable to W7 as there are drivers on the Acer site, and it was a current model while the free upgrades were available. The latest bios, 1.11, still reports 2.0 in the slic dept. Can anyone suggest any way to progress this? Is any sort of cheaper paid-for upgrade possible?

3. I'd hoped switching on virtualisation would be easy, but nothing seems to appear in the bios. I've seen the other thread here. Frightening!

4. I've been running Windows 7 64-bit within the 30-day limit. The mouse driver from the Acer site breaks the touchpad's operation completely, so I've had to revert to the basic drivers. Other drivers from Acer seem OK. W7 seems to have fixed some of the networking problems seen in Vista, but why has the underscore suddenly become forbidden in a network name?

5. I'm planning to purchase W7 Professional if I like Win7 after about 25 days, or load Ubuntu or some other Linux instead. Anyone running Ubuntu on one of these?