Another ‘yes’ on minecraft. My son is playing minecraft on a less-spec’d laptop (A6 processor and whatever graphics comes with it). He can even play Skyrim on it, but at the lower (lowest?) graphic settings, which surprised me. With an A10, should be fine.
I have this exact laptop from the last time it was w00ted, but $10 more plus $5 shipping. Great laptop.
Just dropped it yesterday from 2 1/2 feet (the backpack it was in fell off the table). Only cracked a small corner of the outside lid, booted up fine.
First thing I did, though, was install Revo uninstaller, and uninstalled a bunch of the crap trialware that always comes installed on HP stuff.
I looked at adding Bluray to my old laptop, about a year or so ago. Bluray units (read only) for laptops were running about $50 back then. You just need a small screwdriver to fit the faceplate from your current drive onto the Bluray drive.