I use a laptop as well. (fujitsu S series. carried it all over the world since 2003 without a problem.) And like you, it's used primarily for email and web sites. When I started loading my music files on, it filled up the drive pretty quickly and overburdened the OS quite a bit. (itunes on PC is a memory hog)
Anyway, moving the music to an external drive was the best thing I ever did. I use the laptop for ripping to the network drive (attached via ethernet for speed and accuracy) and to control the playlists (wirelessly to Sonos ZP80). Without the burden of playing music while simultaneously doing a host of other things, a bunch of problems were eliminated. It doesn't take a very stout computer to handle emails and web surfing.(outside of being able to take physical punishment)
Though Sonos may not have the quality of sound you are looking for (without mods anyway), Transporter or Olive might.
Anyway, moving the music to an external drive was the best thing I ever did. I use the laptop for ripping to the network drive (attached via ethernet for speed and accuracy) and to control the playlists (wirelessly to Sonos ZP80). Without the burden of playing music while simultaneously doing a host of other things, a bunch of problems were eliminated. It doesn't take a very stout computer to handle emails and web surfing.(outside of being able to take physical punishment)
Though Sonos may not have the quality of sound you are looking for (without mods anyway), Transporter or Olive might.