My Acer notebook has a stripe down the screen and is pixelly

I got an Acer notebook as a gift about a year ago. I'm not sure what series it is. It is a 40 GB hard drive and I just cleaned it up so it has around 13 GB free space. It has been running pretty smoothly. However -- the screen has a strip of darker colour running down the middle of it, and when I look at photos they're all distorted underneath this damaged strip of screen. Also, the start bar is stretched and all the icons are enlarged and pixelly. Does anyone know what this is? Should I get it serviced, or is there something I can do?

does the band change or is it there all the time. i mean, does it move? I had a similar problem where i had these dark bands across my computer monitor. the bands changed to whatever was on the screen. it ended up being my graphics card. hope you get it fixed.

http://www.dps.uk.com/freeware_DTP.htm

dead pixel checker will tell you.. pretty much..

to replace the screen is a LOT , if you ring up acer, might cost a lot... esp. if they tell you its not coverted by warrenty, it's probably the most expensive part of the pc i guess.

perhaps if your not using it outside using a TFT monitor which is £100 or so would help =)