I have two Compaq Armada Laptops.
Armada E500
Armada M700
BOTH have a popping/crackling noise in the right channel only.

To clarify, headphones plugged into the laptop have the noise.

Ah now, you are getting the sound through the headphones when they are
connected to the laptop, then it's most likely a fault in the sound
processing department, i.e sound card or on-board sound processor.. but
unusual to have two laptops the same...

... unless of course you damaged the speakers cones in the speaker and
the headphones.... the voice coils scraping as it moves between the
magnet due to overloading perhaps or too much bass.

You need to verify this by using a known good pair of headphones or at
least try them elsewhere, we need to isolate the problem so we can point
blame - either speaker and headhones or the laptops but to have two
items go down is sheer bad luck it does sometime happens.

davy