I do not have a laptop and my husband has a docking station for his and his speakers hook to it so I actually don't know but I would assume so. I am sure one of our handy laptop folks will let us know. My GE speakers are just regular pc speakers and use the jack on the back of my pc, but mine are actually plugged in to my KVM switch so they work with all my computers.

I don't have any direct experience with speaker bars, but I can try to answer your questions anyway. Firstly, can you use a speaker bar but use your rear speakers? I think the answer is yes, but it depends on the speaker bar you choose. If the bar has a separate set of binding posts for each channel, then I guess you could do it, and part of the speaker bar would never get used. I looked at a few bars after reading your post and a few of them used optical audio connectors instead - something like that you wouldn't be able to separate the channels out. So make sure you know what the inputs on the back look like. Also, I found one or two units that only have the front and center channels on them (no rears). Something like this might be ideal for you since you don't have to worry about paying for extra speakers in the bar that you are not using. You could still send your rears back if you want, get a full speaker bar. I don't see how they could sound as good as a nice set of independent speakers, but most folks are not picky enough to care. Also - if you want any kind of punch in your bass, you'll still want a separate subwoofer, even with the speaker bar. Again, you might not be picky enough to care.

Sorry for the double post....I looked and it hadn't appeared so I re-posted.

The sound quality of a particular source is not something that's subjective in any way. There's nothing about a digital copy of a recording that compromises the sound source. In fact, it's the opposite, a high percentage of today's recorded music is done (at the studio level) ultimately in digital form. Though it may pass through analog equipment, thought to give warmth to the sound, along the way. The problem is with CDs and other formats. A CD has a limited amount of memory space. When the CD standard was set back at the dawn of time, it was decided to fix the bit and sampling rates at a point that would allow about 70 minutes of content. To get there requires "mastering" and down-sampling of that leaves more than half of the sound content behind. The bit rate standard is about 1400 bits per second, that's what's needed to fit within the capacity of the memory to reach 70 minutes. MP3s and MP4s (the Apple equivalent) take that already compromised sample and reduce it further with compression and further down-sampling - the top MP3 or equiv rate is about 320bps. Streaming music is usually at 128bps or less. Less than 25% of the original source content, if made from a CD, which itself is already a compromised source. . Analog sources have more capacity and so more of the master is present in a vinyl record. There a comparison with digital photography. A commercial photographer, or indeed even a photographer hired to take pictures at a wedding or other social function, will use one of several RAW formats for images. A typical image might be 50 million bits - 50 Mbs for each picture, or larger. For a family event, some of the RAWs I got approached 100Mb. Someone standing next to the photographer taking the same scene with a point and shoot camera or smartphone is going to have a file of 5-10Mbs, max. How could that be? Because the common jpg or gif formats sample, compress and downsize the image to produce a smaller file. Does it matter? Sure. You can produce large images/large print sizes with a RAW file. Any image from a RAW within a relevant range will be quite clear and sharp. With a jpg or gif, as images get much above a compact size, the image will become blurry because of the missing "data" from the image.