While you are not intending to use your laptop as a sound module (driven by an external MIDI controller), you may find yourself wanting to in the future. In that case, the latency between when a sound is triggered and when it is heard is important. In this case, you do not want to use the built in Windows sound drivers, but ASIO drivers. I don't know of any laptops that come with ASIO drivers. However, there are many PMCIA, Firewire, and USB devices that come with ASIO drivers (bypassing the laptops internal sound card). Maybe the cheapest is the Echoaudio "Indigo", a $99 PMICA card with two stereo headphone outputs (which can also be used to drive powered speakers).