Problems With Maya On Laptop Mxps

hey everyone,
basically bought a new dell xps m1730 laptop and its had soo many problems that im finally sending it back-soon
ive been doing my final project so couldnt part with it till then. basically the specs are...

intel core 2 duo T9300 (2.5ghz), 4GB ram, dual 8700GT 256mb, 200GB (7200rpm) harddrive, physx processor windows vista 32bit (DELL dont offer 64!)
not sure on the motherboard as its just the one DELL give it

i have been having lots of problems with the freezing and crashing. the main problems are simple tasks like internet explorer and picture viewer just freeze 70% of the time. and take a long time to load. i have spent about