That is untrue, you just need a good source of power and maybe a couple power supplies. Not enough to have a BBQ or you wouldn't even have a chip that doesn't melt.
Yeah it has something to do with the chipset and the processor, wish there was an easy fix but it usually requires the board to be RMAed or the ram to be as well. Might want to try to reseat the CPU as well, that sometimes work. Try clearing CMOS as well and take out the BIOS battery as well.
It seems to only come in Orange, and shipping it back would cost both time and money. Although, your warranty will be void if you take the bezel off and paint it. Is the orange really that blinding?
I would think you will most likely already have the drivers preloaded in Windows 7, a good thing to go by in terms of drivers is to fix what isn't broken unless there is an improvement to it.
I highly doubt this is due to the video card overheating since there wouldn't be random drops. I used to have this problems, but a quick driver update for my GPU and a combination of reseating my ram did the trick for me.
I think it really comes down to preference as well, if you look into monitors you really have to enjoy the whole thing. Only so many companies make the actual LCD panels, and it is up to the manufacturer to build the rest including bezels and what panels to actually implement.
Kill-A-Watt won't do that, it only measures the whole computer's consumption. There is probably some software that can track it while it sleeps. Try something like Everest or do a quick google search.
Any computer enthusiast knows that switching the GFX card out is near impossible, without creating some heat issues or even breaking parts in general. Ram swapping is quite easy, GFX card is really for the skilled users. Even I wouldn't try to do something like that.