Speakers Portable, Wireless, Bluetooth? Maybe USB.

I love my new Thinkpad T400, and I find the speakers very good for Skype and for news and other wordy streaming radio and podcast programs. The words are loud and very clear.

However, listening to music on the speakers drives me crazy. I am amazed at my difference in perception of quality in these built in speakers between listening for comprehension of what is being said and listening for music quality. I have rather low musical standards and I would have never thought that speakers which I find acceptable while listening to the news would drive me bat-(crazy) while listening to music. I am used to using my rather crummy but not unbearable internal speakers on my old laptop. Please help.

What I need is external speakers which are portable and do not require much set up when moving the laptop from sofa to kitchen table to back porch to bed. I would probably just use them around the house, so they do not have to be small, just easy to move, maybe in a single unit like the Parrot Boombox rather than separate?

The speakers do not need to be more than about 6 feet from the laptop, but having the speakers tethered to the laptop might be inconvenient. I am used to having the laptop plugged in, but I don't want to negotiate a bunch of wires -- I need to be able to get up off the sofa quickly. This is why I thought bluetooth might be a good solution.

The Altec Lansing T515 Portable Speaker seems to be popular, but I don't want to end up with some speakers that are not better than my internal speakers.

I really know nothing about bluetooth, or even speakers. I'm just trying to work out a solution and am hoping that folk here will be generous and give their experience and opinions on using external speakers with laptops.

 

I currently use the Gigabyte GP-2P with my M1530 when I'm not using my headset. The quality is definitely better/louder than my laptop speakers, but uses up a usb port. Quite portable though, and comes with it's own bag. Not sure about the T515 though. Neither am I sure about using bluetooth. Using wires is always faster data transfer, so may be some lag time. Better ask someone who uses bluetooth speakers.

 

Thank you Hirohata, I have seen some USB speakers and wondered how they compared to the internal speakers.