Microphone specifications?

#1 For your price range you should have a look at the AKG C1000s as allround mic. Its a cardioid electret condenser mic. You need a mic preamp to go with it though.
Some portable dat recorders come with built-in mic pres, but those might lie out of your budgetary possibilities. You could get small mic preamp that you'd switch in between your laptop. A portable MD recorder might be better suited, not sure how much the latop soundcard is affected by noise from the latop internally, its usually pretty bad, so comparing the quality of a recording made with the latop on one hand and a portale MD recorder on the other would be advisable.
Just make sure you transfer the recordings to a normal computer before comparing them, so you have a reliable monitoring environment. The recording played back by a laptop might sound very ugly even though the recording itself is fine. The same might happen with the MD recorder. Therefore use the playback device of a desktop computer that you can rely on in terms of quality, to get a transparent comparison between both recordings.

#2 Thanks for the info, but I think "integrated microphone pickup" was the wrong phrase to use. i think I may have come across as talking about the microphone integrated into the laptop. What I really meant was just the quality of the sampling done by the microphone jack.

Edit: Oh, and by MD you mean MiniDisk, right? I hadn't thought about that.

Edit #2: Is the reason I would need a preamp because of the high impedance or low sensitivity of the microphone?

#3 a laptop soundcard's mic in used with a mic that has a plug that fits this socket results in recordings of very bad quality. Theres such a mic coming with any soundblaster you buy. Just go ahead and try it out.

#4 Whoops, you replied before I could post my second edit:

Is the reason I would need a preamp because of the high impedance or low sensitivity of the microphone?

#5 its because condenser mic capsules need phantom power to work

#6 Heh, sorry for bugging you, but is there any disadvantage to using a dynamic mic over a condenser, especially considering that most condensers need Phantom Power, which isn't good for on the road recording (because the pre-amp or mixer I'd need to use would have to be plugged in). Unless you know of a battery powered one?

#7 Condenser mics have a far bigger signal to noise ratio. You get signals that are of higher quality (more useable signal, less static).
Portable mic preamps run off batteries (like the one in the tascam da-p1 portable dat recorder).

#8 For an on-the-road guy, Im not sure if condenser quality is what you really need.

Dynamic mics will last you longer and more durable, easier to carry around and set up. Their quality isnt as good, but for video games I think it's good enough, I used it before. Just get a big-to-small adapter and you dont need no preamp or nothing.

The downside of condensers is that it's too sensitive. Even if you get your input settings right, recording things outdoors will be a pain because there's so much ambient noise.

best thing is to test drive both of them, see which works and return the one that doesnt fit you, but you really need both to hear the difference.