Hi
My experience has been that in general the microphones built into laptops are of somewhat questionable quality.
I have no direct experience with the Toshiba Satellite, so I can't really compare.
I use a Microsoft Life Cam on my PC and it does a very good job picking up voices etc, that are across the room clearly.
You could plug one in and only use the microphone application.
That would lower overhead on your computer and should give really good sound reproduction.
I'm sure that a high end mic would probably do better but I've used this one to record voice files for videos, that I make with good results.
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This is what I'm using, I have had stand alone mics that don't come close to the results I'm getting with...