Hah, I remember when you could tell a text message was about to arrive because speakers would make a noise!
I have external audio because the headphone jack broke and muted the internal audio - still was a long time of wiggling it just so to get a connection until I finally got it.
My next upgrade will probably be a new mouse - my Logitech G500s has started dropping connection momentarily then reverting to a different profile, and it's getting frequent enough to be a nuisance.