I know your situation... I've had a $1428 laptop (sony vaio... overpriced crap in my opinion) I got for chistmas 3 years ago.. It srsly takes 5-10 seconds each time I try to open the quickest softwares... Google Chrome for example...and a bootup can take 2 minutes. It was running Windows 7 64-bit and had 4GB of RAM and a 2.2GHz Intel Core Duo CPU... not to mention a single rather lightweight first person shooter game (CoD: MW2) which lagged at 1280x720 resolution with lowest possible graphical settings... for comparison, I finally got myself a 10x better gaming rig for about the same price...
I guess you could try re-format the harddrive if you havn't already.. otherwise, the best option would be to just get something better, there are plenty of manufacturers that makes laptops that actually perform good for a decent price... However, if your out for a real good performance at good prices, I'd agree with Macid that a home made desktop rig is potentionally the best performance for the price if you get the right parts, of couse.