at the moment, i would suggest looking into getting a UA5. that will like to your laptop via usb and provide a good A/D converter for the price.
you could score one from ebay or someone used cheap. if you are going to run it with a laptop all the time it doesnt have to be modded like everyone here runs (digi-mod to allow standalone use w/out a pc) but it would still work if you bought one with that mod allready
for another 100-200$ you could jump up to a m-audio firewire 410 or the newer edirol box (forgot the model#) that would aloow some multitracking with your laptop