Software issues on brand new dell

My wife and I bought a new dell laptop about 4 months ago.  We have been having issues since almost day 1 that have not been resolved as of yet.  Thankfully (I think), we have an extended warranty and, to Dell's credit, they have been there for every phone call.  Our problem is that the same issue keeps coming up which tells me Dell could have serious technical support issues (some people may not be shocked at this).  My wife is in grad school and we just need the problem fixed.  The technical support people have logged on to our computer and have tried several times to fix the problem, but it keeps coming back.  My wife only isuse it for school and works off of a school website so there are no other issues from other sites that could cause problems.  They say they want us to biy an external hard drive, back everything up and let them do a factory reset.  My problem with that is I am not going to buy another product to help your product become functional.  This will be the last product even remotely associated with Dell I will purchase.