1and1 domains are super rip offs, sure so you save about 5 dollars yearly.. But guess what.. Unless you buy a hosting package from them, you get no access to DNS features. Also, even if you do you DO NOT have nameservers or anything of that sort.

I also agree that their 1and1 improved is bull, I recently got a client that had 1and1 and he says their servers for shared hosting are down more then half of the time and when they are up they are usually very laggy and slow...