[linux-audio-user] Reliable A/D with linux laptop

Hi folks, I've been trying for months now to get arecord to work with the built-in microphone and/or mic jack of my laptop but it just won't work. Since the alsa developers seem totally uninterested in fixing or even understanding this problem (yes, I've posted on alsa-devel many many times) and the built-in A/D on the laptop is unlikely to be any good anyhow I've decided to investigate an external A/D system. It's for a laptop so it would have to be either PC card, USB, or firewire, not PCI. Compatability and reliability are a big deal to me -- I'm fed up with sending mail to alsa-devel, which seems to route to /dev/null as far as I can tell. Can anybody recommend a solution that's really simple to set up and reliable to use under linux and doesn't cost an arm and a leg (e.g. less than $400)? I'm not too picky about number of ins and outs or fancy features, more picky about quality, compatability, ease-of-use, and reliability. Thanks, -n8 --