laptop speakers?

[ifsmithy]

Hi
I have recently bought a laptop and moved to the states from the UK. I have ripped all of my albums onto the hard drive and have bought the cables so that I can use the laptop as a DVD player to my TV. Up until now I have been using a pair of crappy speakers i bought for about 15 dollars when I first moved here. These are now driving me nut because of the poor sound quality.
Basically I would like to keep my laptop as an 'entertainment' center and would like to know if anyone has any experience in what are the best speakers to buy.
From the limited knowledge I have, using the audio headphone socket as the line out is not particularly ideal, soundblaster do the Sound Blaster Extigy which is an external USB soundcard (approx 120 dollars) which seems (from the online reviews) to be an ideal soultion to getting a sound card for the laptop.
Then, its all about the speakers which seems to me, generally the more you pay the better you get (although I am unwilling to pay more than 150 for the speakers)
any advice anyone?
cheers
Ian

 

[ableach33]

what i did was to just run a cable out from my speaker outs to a stereo's aux inputs... if you're really serious, I'd say get the external sound card, run it to an amp and then run it to some real speakers, not computer speakers.

 

[Sid59]

welcome to the forums.

i'd opt for the Creative Extigy (bypass the prolly piss poor intergrated audio) and hook it up to a surround sound, if you have one.