Yes, there was something hidden and I enabled it, and I did record a test project off of YouTube, so technically I've got something. My usual trip to Options<Windows Recording Mixer gives me an error of " mixer program sndvol32/r " can't be found.
This is a different problem caused by Microsoft changing their mixer application and its name. I suggest that you go through Windows Control Panel to access the mixer. Then try ryclark's suggestion.
Steve, the only reason I "upgraded" was because my C drive died on my desktop, and I thought having a laptop would be easier to work with, too.
I have almost lost count of the number of people I know who have done this, and most of them do actually find the laptop approach gives them flexibility.
I believe, based on my experience, that some of the standard chipsets used in laptops are inherently flawed, especially when used with Windows 7, so you do have to be prepared to work around any problems.
An example of a flaw would be the way that so many users find that they can't run wireless networking at the same time as usb audio devices without getting audio clicks. On a desktop, you can often poke around in the bios to solve this; in a laptop the bios is usually very, very inflexible.