Today I wanted to remove the base off my Acer 17″ monitor.  The docs are long-gone as this is a pretty old monitor.  All I wanted to do was to get the base off of it without breaking out my dremel and performing some sort of surgery destined to end poorly.  I google’d the make and model number and was immediately assaulted with, well, a bunch of crap in the form of forum posts where people where having the same problems but couldn’t solve it.

I eventually located a pdf file that had a picture showing a release switch on the back of the vertical post leading to the base, but that only removed the base – I wanted to remove the vertical post as well as I wanted to hang the monitor on a swivel mount above my other monitors.

So, of course, the back of the vertical base had no release…

And then I see the smooth plastic casing over the mount hinge and I poke at it with a screwdriver and it *pops* right off exposing the 4 phillips-head screws mounting the vertical post to the back of the monitor case.

All I do next is rummage around the desk for a phillips.  I remove the four screws, which frees the vertical base from the back of the monitor, allowing me to attach it to the new swivel mount.  I get some electrical tape and tape the screws to the base and toss it in my large cardboard box of dusty computer crap I’m sure I’ll need again someday.

So, that’s pretty much it – a short & sweet post, with some crappy photos, showing how I abused my monitor.  Now you can abuse yours, too!