Failed DVD Drive

Bought a Dell Inspirion 1750 notebook with windows 7.  The disc drive has almost never worked and now is completely dead.(3-4months) I have contacted Dell and they assure me that it is a software issue, yet they will not help me unless I pay them more for the factory-pre-broken laptop.  I have been trying to download the driver-updates, but no matter what successes I have, nothing gets updated.  The download either fails through the Dload Manager or just gets through the browser. (firefox)  When it succeeds through the browser though, it still stops, telling me that the file is not open, yet when I try to open it, of course there is nothing to open.  I have considered throwing this Dell Laptop out the window, but it is now the only PC that I have.  I am finding difficulties owning a computer that never functioned properly.  If there is anyone out there having this issue please, do let me know, as a computer w/out a disc drive is really quite difficult to use,,,,,,,,and lame.(TSST crop DVD+-RW TS-L633C)...and I could really use the help...thanks