External sound card for laptop. Recommendations wanted!

External sound card for laptop. Recommendations wanted!

Application: Ripping vinyl records to .WAV and MP3. I have a good
(old) turntable. A good (new) RIAA equalized preamp and plugs to go
into a sound card. Works great on my desktop, but I want to use it
with my Dell/XP laptop. I tried it in the audio in (laptop sound card)
but it clipped or...? otherwise sounded like crap. No knobs to tune it
either. I'm looking for a moderately priced audio in (from the preamp)
to USB that and associated drivers. Two channels are all that are
necessary. A mic would be nice, but not req'd.

The main thing that I want to know is how to capture the best signal.
These are rare records (1950s jazz) and I'm going to sell them after I
rip them. The PolderbiTs software that I use has good pop and crackle
filters, but I need to rip at a DVD quality sampling rate for those
features to work well. I'll compress later.

Does a USB bus provide the bandwidth to achieve such a throughput? I'd
consider a USB turntable, but the one I have is probably better than
what I could get for the $40-$100 that I expect to pay for the audio/
USB converter (unless convinced otherwise :)
.