To get good quality sound from the speakers in a laptop, you'd need a laptop the size of a good sized desktop. Which kinda defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place. At least, I would think so.

If you don't use hearing aids, earphones work great. The Fi can be quite Hi. Or, if like me, you do use hearing aids, then a good sound system/speakers are a must.
Might even help in getting acquainted with the neighbors. That's good, right?

So simple and I have been frustrated trying to figure it out. Thank you.

They are both lacking on most laptops. Companies like Creative and M Audio create USB soundcards to give you great sound from your laptop:

http://us.store.creative.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-XFi-HD-Sound/M/B004275EO4.htm

http://us.store.creative.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-XFi-Go-Pro/M/B0044DEDC0.htm

http://us.store.creative.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-XFi-Surround-5.1/M/B0044DEDCA.htm

and same goes for desktops. A lot of desktops are equipped with fair quality audio. They have aftermarket sound cards ranging from 35.00 on up.

I have read several stories of laptop owners who wanted to record "what you hear" to record music off the vids on Youtube. That feature has been disabled in many laptops.

I need something that has a USB and audio jack. Thank you.

YTD Video Downloader is a great little piece of freeware for downloading and converting video...if you can ignore the aggressive upselling and multiple browser add-on bundling offers. It quickly downloads video from YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Vevo, and more than 60 other supported video sites, converts video to the standard formats for iPad, iPhone and PSP (MP4); iPod (MOV); cell phone (3GP); Windows Media Video (WMV); Xvid MPEG-4 (AVI) and MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3), and also plays back videos in a very basic player.
http://download.cnet.com/YTD-Video-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10647340.html

And/or

About Audacity

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
And more! See the complete list of features.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Very useful and I do like free stuff.