The update as promised. It's a big thumbs up.
I'm using said Acer laptop to type this and it's spot on. I actually rather want one. Fantastic screen, Crystal Brite or somesuch trade name.
The build quality knocks Dell's into a cocked hat, it's easily on a par with HP and other big name brands I'd say. Not quite IBM space-age-alloy-casing standard, but then not much is and you pay a fortune for it.
All told, I can't fault it. If you can find one with the spec you want and it represents a saving for the same spec' or higher spec' for the same money over a big name brand, don't hesitate.
Oh, one small foible. Touchpad scrolling refused to work in Firefox initially. A quick Google cast light on this being a common Synaptics/Mozilla problem. After a little bit of messing about downloading drivers from Acer's website so as not to risk losing custom functionallity I took the plunge and downloaded the generic driver from Synaptics. Reboot - problem solved - no functionallity lost.