laptop sound (Score 1)

So much discussion has gone into what to look for in a laptop and such, but I haven't heard any discussion on the sound cards found in laptops. I have an Inspiron 7500 running RedHat 7.1, and I love this machine for everything except the sound. The screen is beautiful, and everything runs great, but when I hack away I've got a playlist of mp3's I like to keep running to keep my sanity, but with this laptop, and any other I've used for that matter, the sound flat out sucks. Has anyone had any different experiences with sound? Even external speakers don't do much. This alone keeps me from watching dvd's and using it for much of anything except for when I travel. Otherwise though, minus sound, Dell is the way to go, you cant beat the features, and the display, wow.