Recommendation for a slow laptop - another OS maybe?...

I have a Dell mini-laptop - model Inspiron Mini 1018 with a Windows 7 Starter OS, N455 1.66GHz and 1GB of RAM.
Since the day I've first used it, it has been extremely slow.

It takes softwares a long time to go up, opening a video with Media Player Cassic can take almost 40 seconds, browser windows are annoying, and I actually can't watch any Youtube videos since it is so slow it's stuck every half a second (not buffering, just stuck)

It seemed weird to me that Dell would manufacture and sell such a thing, and tought it might be just the way mini-laptops are, but after seeing it wasn't like that with other laptops, it guess it's just mine.

Would you maybe reccomend something I can do to get a better use out of this thing? maybe lower the OS to XP, or maybe there's a "lighter" version of W7 or W8?...

Thank you in advanced.