My alienware is so slow its not even funny

Hi guys I have had an Alienware Mx17r4 for about a year now and the laptop is great for gaming as anyone would expect, however everything else is soooooo slow. The startup takes a good 3 minutes but even when the desktop is loaded it takes another 5 minutes for me to actually be able to do anything. If I try to open a file in those 5 minutes my computer slows down even more and that file will just stop responding. Even opening a word doc takes a good 40 seconds which may not sound like much but trust me it is. My cheap bottom of the line lenovo that I bought for travelling is easily at least 3 times faster. Its so frustrating especially when I spent so much on the machine. I've tried running the alien autopsy and everything checks out according to it. Another thing is when I unplug the laptop form the charger it is practically useless, I cant even run minecraft on it if it isn't plugged in. Is that normal and more importantly is there anything that i can do.

Thank you so much,
Ryan

P.S. I would also like to add that I have set the laptop to run an maximum settings on both plugged in and battery mode.