erratic touchpad Inspiron 1525

I have a Dell Notebook Inspiron 1525.  My problem is with the touchpad.  It is very erratic and not precise.  I would rather use the touchpad than a mouse.  I spoke to Dell and they suggested I just disable the touchpad and use a mouse.  I am annoyed because the purpose of my using a laptop instead of a desktop is the ease of carrying around my laptop without having to bring a mouse.  The Dell tech support have tried to analyse the cause but could not find a solution.  I'm using windows vista home.  I dont like it but that is what was set up so I had to take vista.  I prefer xp.
In your experience with dealing with pc users of laptops, maybe you have in your database a solution to this.  It is very  un precise and sometimes it moves on its own. I'm so disappointed.  I only had this for a few months Help please

My configuration:
Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor T4200 2.0 GHZ 1 MB cache 800 MHZ FSB
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM
250GB sata hard driveIntel Integrated Graphic Media accelerator X3100
Dell wireless 1395 802.11g 54Mbps wireless mini card