not too happy with new 8600

Hey all,
Love all your reviews and news, and the fact I have learned much from reading. I have been in the market for a notebook for a while and based on what I have read, I decided to buy the 8600. I was upgrading in pc's from a desktop athlon 1.2, asus board and gf3 to this, of which seemed to me to be a pretty decent upgrade. However, I realize now that dell support really does suck, nobody can get anything right over there, I just hope they get it right when I return it Anyway my specs: 1.6wuxga, 9600 pro, 512 mb, 7200 rpm 60 gb.
I recieved on friday, reformated on saturday, by today my mind is set to return.
I am having problems with playing games. It will run with a score of approx.(2730) 3d mark 03. But I see the textures on the screen get out of control, for me its hard to describe. It gets very liney in a way when it goes into some more of the complex textures, is this the "horizontal rain effect" that I here about?, I can't be sure, but it gets bad at times, bad enough for my wife 10 feet away to say holy s**t lol. It will run UT99 somewhat ok, which is important for me, it will not play MOHAA, it will play UT2003 but again, goes into that liney effect across the screen. I have not tried to install COD, being that I am having probs with these games, I won't bother.
This thing also seems to have problems extracting folders that are big in size, (about a 2gb compressed folder), it crashes.
Other than that, I really love this thing, Its everything I want in a notebook if it would work right. So this is why I decided to return, not sure about exchanging it though, being that none of the guys on here seem to be having these problems, maybe I just got a bad apple, which I totally understand

personally, I think I would like to exchange, being that this a nice noteook, very responsive. and no, I did not try any games before formating, I only ran 3dmark, I didn't see any problems, but from what I noticed, it looks clear when I run on a fresh reboot, if no reboot, it has problems. I used the drivers on the driver disc. I also unistalled the card once I found problems, and used the drivers on dell's support site. still no good. Also one other thing I forgot to point out, in the device manager, I have a yellow circle with ! for the usb 2.0 controller, I had this when I first got it too, called dell, they said they had no drivers for it and did not recommend any 3rd party drivers. So that kinda upset me a bit.

ut 2003 plays well now, but it wouldn't complete 3dmark. i saw no problems other than a loss of framerate. still, shouldn't the card perform well enough to be set to max on ac? And is anyone else having a problem playing medal of honor? I can get into to the game settings, but it will not launch a game. It just crashes. Other than that, I will run 3dmark a few more times, and give you my results.

ok, i ran 3d mark a few more times, a couple times at the settings you reffered to me, and then bumped it back up to optimal. for most part it does fine with balancing out the setting, but a lower framrate is happening, I cranked it back up, and I didn't even let it finish, I saw enough. I will give em a call and see what happens.
As far as my experience with the support team, I was expecting it I guess. Yesterday i called them about it and had no solution for me, but I didn't ask about returning or replacing. I also asked the usb drivers, and I will give what rykwon97 wrote a try. But I also have a safely remove hardware icon in systray. It is reffering to the cd/dvd burner. I asked if this was normal, they say yes. I ask all you, is this normal? This is why I am debating on just returning the system for a complete exchange. What do you think? And thanks guys for all the ideas and help, I appreciate it much.

Thanks to all and thanks machina, for all your tips and suggestions. The new 8600 is on the way. I hope this thing will actually play some games. If it's as good as everyone says, it should be fine to run anything I need.
Just to let you know, I play a few games, (UT,UT2k3,MOHAA,COD) and use my gps every now and then. Anyone have any problems or tips for the games I have listed as far as compatibility?

But much thanks to everyone. And good luck moderating machina