[ddouglass]

Many laptop drives are the bottom of the line quality and will not read CDGs, so most laptop users end up using an external drive to do their importing.
If you are referring to the permanent importing of videos, no Hoster can't do that yet. That is coming in 4.10 early in 2009. Also video importing can only be done from the hard drive and not directly from the DVD or CD.
What brand and model of laptop is it?
What processor speed?
How much memory? Many laptops also use there main memory to "share" with the video card too instead of having dedicated memory for that and this will effect performance.
Have you gone to the company's website and downloaded the latest drivers for it?
If you have been having that much trouble with this laptop, then yes maybe you should go ahead and take it back (to get it in before the 30 days are up), but don't give up and go back to disks. Do some research and fine a laptop or a small shuttle type computer that will work. Maybe you can find one with XP and less headaches.
If you take it back be sure to uninstall any programs you have loaded including Hoster.
As for your other problems with this if you will list some here then maybe we can help you understand them and figure out how to fix them.