Ronnie - talk to me before getting the laptop. I'll steer you in the right direction for a new one...
Wireless routers are great but they MUST be setup securely. I had been fighting with my ISP that my lines sucked and they said they were fine, well on the slightly more than rare occassion when it went down, I'd "borrow" my neighbors wireless
. I can see 4-5 wireless networks from my house and get on to 2-3 of them because the people do not secure them.
Typical wireless B/G range is 100-150 feet indoors. The amount and type of objects in the wat between one point and the other will determine signal quality and speed. The further you go and more obstructions you have, the lower your line speed will be.
Outside, with a decent system you can probably push out to 4000 feet with little tweaking.
For the speakers, if it is a surround system, you'll need to see if the laptop supports all of the features. Semi-common in desktops but not as much in laptops. What kind of jacks do the speakers have?
The laptop should be anel to support all of the equipment that the desktop did assuming it has all of the right interfaces, for example, not many new laptops still have a paralell port...
I'm going to move this to computers but leave a redirect in the main forum...