An ASIO-compliant soundcard is likely to be better quality and more reliable for recording than a machine’s built-in soundcard. With a Windows laptop, it’s easiest to look at external usb soundcards. There’s a wide range of cards from different vendors: have a look at Steinberg’s UR series. These will allow you to use an ASIO driver and will give you low latencies for recording, as well as have some extra goodies like built-in DSP effects.
Having said that, there is a superb piece of freely available software called ASIO4ALL, which allows many people to successfully use their laptop’s built-in soundcard for recording. In most cases, ASIO4ALL allows you to use your built-in soundcard at much lower latencies and much more successfully than the normal driver. The beauty of it is you can download it for nothing so you can try it out and see if it works for you. Good luck!
Steve.