Cd Ripping - is it better to use inbuilt CD drive of laptop or use an external Cd drive

Try this before you do anything else. Download a free program called EAC (Exact Audio Copy). Install it, and then configure it using the wiki setup guide. (You need to use the guide. Its too difficult to figure out on your own.). During the setup process you can have EAC test/calibrate both of your optical drives for best quality. Once all that is done, try re ripping the CD's you used for the comparison to see if the quality is any better.

" So its really up to the software to assure accurate rips or not. Not sure how exactly one can achieve that based on drive type alone so I think that is a witch hunt.   Better ones will rip faster because they operate faster with fewer errors along the way."

That's one reason why it would rip faster, but if you're comparing full size internal/external optical drives to the small drives like they use in notebooks and usb powered internals, the full size drives work much faster regardless of errors.

Its also worth noting that ripping is hard on the drive, so I wouldn't use anything expensive. 

" I’ve seen EAC and it is good as well I believe but some may find it harder or less intuitive to use,"

There's several setup guides available online that walk you through the config process. It only needs to be done 1 time. After that, its just as easy to use as dbPoweramp.