Thanks for the reply. The Gateway can wait. Maybe it is just too old for
12.04; I'll see if anything emerges as a fix in the next few months.

The video problem is really vexing though. After running 1920 x 1080 for
years on four computers it's just not good enough to be restricted to lower
resolutions on the same hardware. It seems there just isn't a working
nvidia driver available. Here's hoping someone writes one soon.