XPS 1647 Help

I'm new here as I just got my first ever laptop recently so please bear with me on stupid questions. (I've only ever owned desktops)

I noticed that this laptop performs much worse than my older PC, which was actually weaker in terms of specs. So, I decided to go on an update/tune up spree and gotten more confused than I ever was before.

Please, help me out with the following questions:

1) I downloaded the latest "catalyst" for the graphics card, that is the driver for the card, yes? (Don't laugh, I'm not very familiar with the way ATI does things)

2) I go to the DELL driver page for my laptop and get a shotgun blast to the face of the variety of drivers, most of which I probably shouldn't mess with. How do I know which ones to download??

3) I downloaded, from the aforementioned page, three drivers: BIOS update, Audio update, and SATA storage device update. I think I did the right thing by updating BIOS and the Audio. However, after updating the third one, I noticed an icon for BD-Rom drive, right next to the icon for my DVD-Rom drive, under My Computer. I'm pretty sure my drive is not BD so uh... what do I do now?

Any responses are greatly appreciated.

 

1) Yes, it is. 10.8 is the latest you can get atm.
2) You don't need them unless you want to. Just make sure you download and flash to the latest BIOS.
3) Uninstall it or use as you see fit.

 

How old is this laptop? If you only received in the last week or so, the drivers should be fairly recent.

Whenever I get a new laptop, I tend to do a clean install of the operating system. Tend to find it runs a hell of a lot better without all the cr@p Dell pre-installs.

There is no reason why this new laptop should run slower than an old desktop. Speed of HDD should be comparable; RAM should be just as fast. Processor speed could be slower as would be the case with the GPU (with their newer equivalents). The only thing I can think of is that its bogged down with useless software.

Also Windows 7 should be quick. From what I have heard anyway.

Dell Support should be able to offer some advice since it should be still under warranty.

 

Thanks for the replies. The laptop is new but the drivers are not. The BIOS version already on the laptop was A00 and I know that they have updated it several times on the site because someone they used to have A04 and now it's A09. It seems like they are selling it with the same software setup they had from the beginning.

Also, could someone fill me in on Turbo Boost. Do I need to download that? Is it useful?