I am looking to buy a new laptop and was wondering if I can find a decent one for less than $500 and where might I be able to find these. I started searching myself and got some laptops but they seem pretty weak.
If you are looking for something to browse the internet, write documents, listen to music and do all the standard stuff... finding one shouldn't be too hard.
I bought a used circa-2004 ultraportable (Toshiba Portege R100) for ~$300 off ebay, and it was totally fine for browsing the internet, watching poker videos, and playing lite 2D PC games during my bus commute.
PS: At least, it was until the hard drive died. Now I'm looking at spending ~$150 for a replacement 1.8" HD and ~$150 for an external optical drive (how else can I install XP on the new drive), which makes my cheap purchase not so cheap.