Dell Inspiron 1521 Laptopw Windows Vista

I purchased this laptop for my daughter for college. As soon as she received it, the DVD drive did not work. I spent 2 hours on the phone with Dell tech assistance trying to fix the problem. After all that effort, the Tech finally told me it would have to be returned. The return process was very involved. I thought it would be simpler! I had to wait for a "bill of lading" to return the original laptop. But first, the next day, they had already sent a duplicate laptop via Fed Ex. So after the fact I found out that the other laptop had been charged to an account they created for it. I had to wait for them to receive the defective one before they would credit my account. I suppose this is to prevent theft, but it would have been better to allow me to send it back first, then send the replacement. The replacement worked fine for half of the year, then she called me back and said she was getting blue screens. She was in the middle of finals and did not have time to spend 2 hours (or even less) with tech assistance. So I decided to make an early visit and called tech assistance. It turns out that she had tried to install more memory (per the instruction booklet included with the laptop) and the Windows Vista system had rejected it! 1 mb is already on board for memory. She tried to upgrade it to 2mb and the windows program does not allow it. Dell's solution? take out the memory (which was not Dell brand, but Crucial brand which has always been dependable) and buy Dell memory. Then of course it worked and she was able to re-claim her work for her finals. When she first received it, it was fast but had alot of preview programs installed on it, such as: Norton trial version for Vista, Yahoo jukebox, Google toolbar, windows media player, etc, etc, etc, etc. Needless to say, aftertaking it to my son who is a pc repair guy part time, and after he removed these unnecessary programs, it ran much better and a little faster. One year later, she is having problems burning cds and the performance of the dvd player & burner is inconsistent. She has had to make due & will keep it until she finishes college, but if I were to purchase a laptop again, I would not go with Dell or Windows Vista. Windows Vista is not compatible with certain word documents she created for her classes andis not compatible with certain hardware & software unless it is specifically for Vista.