Overall Decent Blender with many speed settings

I recently bought this blender from Linen and Things based entirely on the trusted name brand and the price. I was pleased at first with the purchase due to the overall appearance and various speed settings. There is a high and low switch and many settings for different foods. There is also a specific button for crushing ice. The one downfall of the product is that it makes a lot of noise. It makes so much noise blending harder foods, that at times, i feel the entire blender may fall apart. Also, I am unable to pull/unscrew the glass top from the base blade part. This makes it difficult to clean it thoroughly if there was any food to leak out from the base.
The blender container is actually made of heavy duty glass and the base is made of plastic - which to me is not very sturdy if you plan on keeping it for a while.
Overall, based on what I paid for it, it is definitely a good blender for the time being. If you are looking for something sturdier and longer lasting, I would not recommend it. Overall I would give it an average to good rating and on a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate it as a 6.