Laptop adventures in sound

I tried out the sound on my Inspiron 6400 for softsynth playing. Can't get the latency low enough to make it not suck. I think my plan now is to get the laptop sound good enough for live playing and then (maybe later) replace my current desktop recording rig with some sort of Firewire deal (leaning towards the Presonus Firebox, still not sure though.) That way I can use the laptop for live playing without having to dismantle my desktop audio setup every time I need to add some blorp sounds to my live songs. But I still have the option of yanking the Firewire device out of my desktop and taking it with me to record on the laptop. Trying to cheap out of buying a better low-latency soundcard for my laptop led me to ASIO4ALL last night which is an attempt to provide low-latency audio drivers for even the most craptacular of audio cards. It didn't work, but I sent off a debug report to the author so maybe something will come of it before I cave and blow another hundred dollars on something retarded.