Posting this as a follow up just for informational purposes. The problem seemed to be that for some reason there are two video adapters and two monitors (both identical) that show up in the device manager. Why? I have no idea. If I uninstall the "extra" set, they just re-appear. If I simply disable them, they stay disabled and I do not experience the blurry display. I spent months trying to track down the problem as I just had a gut feeling that the problem was not with the LCD display itself- I upgraded drivers, downgraded drivers, etc. I am not sure what made me notice the two entries in the Device Manager, but I think I have solved my problem.

Acer makes a good product, I love their monitors I have an Acer LCD monitor, my husband had an Acer laptop several years ago that he liked a lot, then Acer kinda went out of biz but has come back to life in a big way with pretty good products. The main thing to watch in that price range would be the type processor I would try not to get the lower end processors like the Intel celeron, I personally prefer AMD processors. RAM you can always add more easily and cheaply as long as it has expansion slots for it. I like HP and IBM/lenovo laptops, Compaq is also now by HP. Sony is good but generally pricey. You can at times find good prices on some of the lower end Dell laptops too. Battery life should be considered for laptops if they will be used as such. I would google each model number you consider and go to sites that have real reviews by real people that own that product. I have seen some very good prices at walmart and walmart.com and at sams. You can find some good prices at www.buy.com some of those are factory reconditioned though so be aware of that, however they will still generally have a manufacturer warranty.

Just reading through the manual it sounds like the camcorder can connect with a USB cable. I don't know if Sony's software is compatible with whatever version of Windows you're using now. The other option is there seems to be a output jack that provides composite video but left/right audio. To use that, you'd need some kind of video capture device, which are lesson common than they used to be. Pinnacle and Roxio seem to still offer them.

DH laid it in the back floor of the car and then forgot about it. He moved the seat back and squished it (the screen was against the seat and the actual computer part was "possibly" protected since the screen was between it and the seat. I may just have to invest in a hard side case instead of a soft side one. So far I have gotten everything off- still need to dig out the internet bookmarks. I am actually using it right now to send this. The right side of the screen scrolls very quickly by itself (think old B/W TVs where you had to adjust the connected rabbit ears) then there is a giant white section and then the left 1/3 of the screen works but has black sports the size of a silver dollar. I just ran my statistical software and the analysis is coming out like it did this morning. This is a snapshot of the laptop screen (I added the red square to show that is supposed to be my desktop. When I do an "Alt+PrtSc" and save it as a picture, I get the whole desktop (hope I do not offend anyone with my pic, it is from LOL-Cat and so cute!) I just used my level and it appears to NOT be warped... tried it on the desk and the floor because the house and desk are both over 100 years old and not that level, themselves... but the button in the level appears to be in the same spot where it is sitting directly on the desk or on the laptop sitting on the desk. Since the alt-print screen show everything and the software appears to be working, am I fairly safe that the computer is okay? What else should I do to check the hard drive? THANK YOU!!!!