This laptop is very slow - Computers & Internet

What do you mean when you say it is "Slow"? does it take a long time to start up? is it slow when trying to load a web page? Is it slow trying to open a program?

Laptop can slow for various reason like -virus infection,hard drive has a lot of programs and files stored on it, this can also slow your computer.
If your RAM is failing or you don't have enough to properly support your operating system,then your laptop can be slow.see:how to Increase laptop speed.

Adding more RAM can speed up a Laptop.

You are frustrated with the slow performance of your Dell laptop? You can quickly fix this slow PC problem and prevent it from happening again, all with a few clicks. Simply apply some easy tips as discussed below to make your Dell laptop/computer make faster - http://technical-support-squad.blogspot.in/2012/08/make-dell-laptop-run-faster-how-to.html

#1 Make sure your laptop is free from virus, spyware and trojan. A virus or spyware can make your laptop run slow or even damage the whole system. Run a security scan to find out if there are infection files hidden in the system. The slow laptop would be fixed by eliminating the virus.
#2 Remove obsolete programs to release more hard drive space. Laptop slow problem sometimes would be caused by the less hard drive space. To optimize your slow laptop, you can try to delete those unneeded programs, files from the hard disk especially the system disk.
#3 Empty the Recycle Bin to retrieve more system resource. Your laptop slow symptom maybe arises due to the deleted files in the Recycle Bin. If you forget to empty the Recycle Bin, those files in fact still exist on the hard drive and keep eating up your laptop system resource so that the laptop will run slow.
#4 Scan and fix Windows registry. Do you know how important registry is in Windows system? Corrupted, invalid or malicious registry will slow down your laptop and make it run unstable. You would receive many error messages such as dll errors, Internet Explorer errors or blue screen of death in the using of laptop. Thus, it is necessary for you to fix your slow laptop by cleaning registry errors.

Try deleting all unwanted files like Temp files, disk clean up, disk defragmentation.

Change or add an extra hard drive of sollid state drive whill let your laptop fly. Check the post how to do it.

Have you tried turning off any background programs that you do not need running in the system tray... Check out your system tray and exit any programs that you do not need.

Have you installed Vista SP1 yet? It supposed speed things up.

Get it HERE from Microsoft

in your case it could be your battery is bad.
battery can cause alot of strange thing.
from slow to touchpad/keyboard not working.

But most of the slow problem it cause by
1. memory.
Make sure you have enough memory
2. software.
Tried to re-install the operating system.
3. defective harddrive.