I work online, and I recently asked all my friends who also work online about buying a cheap laptop. I have a nice computer at home, so I just wanted something that would handle basic tasks such as working in Word or Excel, and browse the internet and email. They all thought about it and came up with what they think are the two best options. First was The Acer 722-BZ197. The other suggestion, which was slightly more expensive, was for the Lenovo Netbook, model G560. Both of these would be good for a student or any casual computer user. You won’t be doing any advance video editing on these machines, but they should work fine for almost any other use.
Both of these computers are available for under $500 usually, including shipping.