[tikimon]

If you can acquire acrylic at a price that better fits your budget I say go for it. We can all agree that acrylic scratches easily, but there are products that help ease the pain. Novus makes a great polisher for use on the outer surface.
Rainbow makes one as well that can fix scratches on inside surfaces. For my acrylic tank I made my own repair chamber. A four sided acrylic box with a silicon gasket. This enables me to pump water out of the section that needs to be polished. The pressure from the tank holds it in place. The big thing to remember with acrylic is that you can't use standard scrapers on inside surfaces. And for outside, you can't clean with windex and paper towels.
I use an eyeglass cloth and have had good results.