What am I doing wrong with my 6400?

My laptop is not as fast as it should be.
Simple tasks are freezing/stalling for a couple of seconds before they respond. For example, when I open "control panel" it takes about 3-5 seconds to get all the icons up. When I open volume control from the tray, it takes a good 2 seconds to respond to me clicking on the volume bar. Lastly, iTunes has noticably slowed down as well; takes a second or two to respond to my commands.

Maybe im nit picking here, but should simple tasks respond instantaneously?
I have definitely noticed a slowdown since I got this machine 4 weeks ago.

This is all with just iTunes and one or two windows in Firefox open. IE7 is not even an option cuz its so much slower.

For clarity, I have the following:

Core Duo/9400 @2.53
4.00 GB RAM
32-Bit Vista Ultimate

Whats the deal?

EDIT: BTW, I use a Dell docking station with external monitor. My laptop gives off crazy heat!

 

i had vista, re-install windows xp and had same experience as you. i uninstalled dell control point connection manager and work flawlessly now.

 

You mention the heat and slowdown, so I'm guessing something is stressing your CPU in the background and using up all its resources. Open up your task manager and find the culprit.

 

I agree with smoothtofu. That or you got a lemon. :X

 

I checked the processes and I dont have anything abnormal running.
I do have a whole lot of "Host process for windows" processes running, but other than that-not much else.

 

What is the CPU usage at?

 

Jumping between 10 and 20%

 

a whole lot of "Host process for windows" processes - what are they?

 

I have no clue.

 

Most of our 6400's have been performing well and without hitches by promptly uninstalling the Connection Manager and Security Manager after taking them out of the box. One of them hangs so badly that it won't really uninstall anything and I'm working through getting all the issues worked out on a from-scratch XP install on that one.

I don't know if the Connection Manager is needed for the Dell WiFi card, as we never use anything but the Intel WiFi. On the Intel WiFi all it does is get in the way. The default interface for Intel ProSet and the WWAN (Verizon) cards are far superior to the Connection Manager.

We don't use smartcard or fingerprint reader so I also don't know what impact removing the Security Manager might have on those.

It's worth a shot to try uninstalling those, and if you need them you can always grab them again off Support.dell.com