Chris, I believe we have the same laptop/vidcard.
Dell Inspiron E1705 w/ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
When I first started trying to play POTCO on my E1705 it played ok, but it always crashed on exit of the game. I submitted bug reports, and was told similarly to update my video drivers.
I updated to the latest offered by Dell (I think dated 5/2007 or 8/2007, cant remember now).
They made it so I could not sail or play half the game, so I reverted back to the previous (dated 3/14/2007), and lived with the crash on exit.
When the updates first came out I had problems again, in that the game would crash everytime I went to sail. I updated the drivers again, but this did not help this time either, and again caused me more problems, so I reverted back to the original 3/14/2007 drivers. I even posted here, that I hoped POTCO fixed it because I was dead in the water on my end.
The next day POTCO updated, and I have not had the problem again since, other than it still crashs when I exit the game... which I can live with.
So, you may want to actually try a previous set of drivers for the video.
Good luck.
Zeppers Lvl40
http://pirates.teamofx.us