Acer laptop monitor - after a mighty dive

Hi folks,

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to carry my laptop as well as a crate of beer and a backpack. Not a particularly flash idea, resulting in me dropping my laptop (in its carrybag) on to the kitchen floor. It's an Acer Aspire 3100, and is three or four years old.

When I tried to turn it on, the monitor displayed a bunch of random flashing lines (mostly black and grey). However, I found out that by applying downward pressure to certain parts of the laptop body (e.g. bottom right below the keyboard, or the strip above the keyboard below the monitor), the monitor would display properly. When plugged into an external monitor, the laptop works fine, although the brightness and colours change slightly with pressure to certain parts of the laptop body.

I've been unable to find any obvious loose connections. I've shown it to a couple of IT people, who haven't been able to find the exact problem, but have suggested that the laptop is too old to be worth paying for a technician to try and fix it. At this stage the laptop monitor doesn't come on at all anymore (so situation seems to have gotten worse), although it still works fine when hooked up to an external monitor.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this problem, before I head out and buy a new one? Any advice much appreciated