I've got the Dell Inspiron laptop as well DM, and the booklet tells me the mike is on each side of the webcam (see 1 and 4 in the picture, unless I'm dumb!)!

Don't ask me how to work it 'cos I haven't workd that out yet, but there's a built in mike on my desktop as well.

Here you are DM. I copied the page from my Dell Inspiron instruction book.


Also....to stop Skype alarming. Make sure you have it set to "Offline".