A stock Ua-5(no mods at all) will work with your laptop just fine. It's made to feed through USB. However, I have heard that the USB signal can be glitchy. I not speaking from experience here, I just read it somewhere on this board. What I would recommend is getting it digi-modded to be a standalone preamp(you can also get some other mods for sound adjustment too) from Oade.com. You'll have to then get a soundcard for your lappy that takes a digi-signal(coax or opti). That way should you ever have to replace the lappy with something(MD, JB3, or Dat), you can still use the UA-5. Unfortunately, the stock UA-5 doesn't work unless hooked up to a computer via USB, the digi-mod fixes that problem so that it can be used anywhere.