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

I second the recommendation to use Exact Audio Copy. At that point it shouldn't matter - assuming both cd drives are operating correctly - which drive you use. 

Also, while true that EAC can be optimally configured, realistically the default settings (i.e. settings the software makes/determines at the time of installation) is more than adequate. You shouldn't need to do any further research in that regard. The settings can always be tweaked.

To mapman's point about dbpoweramp using a database to compare, EAC also has this feature. The caveat in both cases is that the data is known. Meaning if you are ripping CDs of some bootleg recordings not widely available, or if users opt-out of sending the data, this option will be of no value because the database wouldn't contain someone else's previously ripped information.

Something else (not already mentioned herein) to look for. My assumption is you are ripping directly to a wav file. As you state the Dell CD has less bass energy, check the windows properties on both (Dell and internal PC) wav files. The Audio Bit Rate should be identical and the disk file size should ideally be identical but may differ ever-so-slightly. If theses properties are way off, something is very wrong and in that case you should double-check whatever output ripping options your Jriver, EAC, dbpoweramp (or whatever) is set to. 

@mapman and @melbguy1 not that we need/want to belabor the point of "slowness", but in the case of EAC (and likely the case with db Poweramp although I have no experience with it), the software can easily be configured to ignore/bypass "un-correctable" read errors. In so doing, the overall rip process is not stymied by the few bad sectors on the disk. Granted, those un-correctable tracks would have been bypassed in the rip, however, one can then re-rip those failed tracks in "burst" mode which will be very fast (because there is no attempt to correct anything). Further, the user now knows where the error/failure occurred.