...the protective film on the case is peeling badly. Is it supposed to look like that?

They even shelled out a lot of money for the design. Just be glad they dropped the idea of a special (as in the special olympics...) womans edition, that would have been atrocious...

And believe me, it looks even worse after you had a chance to leave some fingerprints on it (especially the display - always keep some cleaning fluid close by)

In case you haven't noticed, HP's been putting those swirly prints and whatnot on the their laptops for at least a year now, longer than Dell's been doing it to their own laptops.

My coat's the one with the cotton gloves, great for glossy screens and glossy laptop cases.