This 1690 series of Acer Aspire frequently arrive with a Mats---a (Panasonic?) slimline combo-drive; and it's one that has the usual 5 region changes only allowed; after-which it locks on the last... Usual software utils that get around this irritation (with other/most drives) don't work with this (and other similar) Mats---a drive - and that software's chaps advise they aren't going to have a go at making it resolve the issue... Without getting into the whole issue of region locking etc... (been well discussed ad-nauseum already...) has anyone managed to either defeat this region lock (for these Mats---a drives) even at this late stage..? Or even better, has anyone manged to install a suitable replacement (thus getting rid of the Masthita), or at least know of a suitable alternative/replacement combo-drive that "will" fit and work in place of the irritating Mats---a series? Current approach is to leave the Acer built-in drive set on say region-2, and use an external combo-drive that is set to another (e.g. region-1) and use the usual utils/software to over-ride region details on a disk played in the external... Depending sometimes on the exact (vint)age of a given Acer laptop - even within a given series... the combo-drive may or may not be the same across the range; the more recent seem to use slot-load, earlier use tray load; and in the case of the slot-load often slimline? And it looks Tom's Hardware "purity" checker... has a problem with the full name of Mats---a...; doesn't seem to like the 5-7th letters...???