Travel Technology - Audio From the USB Bus

The speakers in my laptop are pretty bad for music. I'd like to hook up my unused Logitec powered spearkers while I am sitting at my desk, but don't like the speakers having to be plugged into the headphone jack on the front of the laptop.

I would like to pull the audio off of USB since I have a USB hub connecting my printers and external drives with a single cable. I see that they make external sound card dongles that do this, but am not sure if that would conflict with the sound card in the laptop. I'm also cheap and don't want to spend the $12.

I do have a mini USB headphone (http://www.motorazr.com/content/accessories/73-75--2844.htm) adapter from an old Motorola phone. Could I just plug this into the hub with an adapter (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10314&cs_id=1031401&p_id=4817&seq=1&format=2)to get audio?

The Motorola one won't work, it just uses the audio signal from the special Motorola jack layout.

A cheap USB audio dongle will work fine, but you'll need to set the new USB adapter as the default output device in your control panel.

...is to plug the speakers into the headphone jack like you are doing.

Like ScottC said - or I've got "port replicators" for both of my Thinkpads at home and at work. I set the Thinkpad in the cradle and power, video, USB, audio, network, etc are all plugged in already.