Best Laptop for around $500

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The Dell latitude D630 is pretty economical. You can get a used one for like $300 and new is not very expensive too. You can read its review and specs here:

http://www.binary-store.com/computers/dell-latitude-d630-core2duo-laptop-pc-computer/
 
Dell D630 Latitude was good in 2007 and 2008. For 2012? not a good value even at $300
 
512MB RAM does not impress.

TigerDirect has a D630 with better specs for $50 less
- just without the 1440x900 res screen
 
That guy has suggested the D630 on this $500 thread and another. He must own a store that has a bunch of off-lease D630s in stock he's trying to unload. For shame.
 
Just to make it clear, it's not my store. It is a review store. And they have good reviews on desktops and laptops. I was sharing something that i liked and i can see the respect that i am getting here.
 
It was a great notebook in 2008. I happen to own one and it still works.
It's just a bit long in the tooth and not a good value IMO.
 
More to the point - it's pretty far off from what the OP is looking for.
 
He was looking for an economical laptop that can be used for light gaming purpose. I have used dell latitude myself and i have played a lot of good games on it. So its not that far off i think.
 
I think you're very wrong about that. Not a good match for the OP.
 

Take K53TK, throw in another 4GB ram module, OC your CPU (info here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/601808-k53ta-best-deal-ever-could.html ) get newest chipset drivers from asus homepage and be happy! Most of the games (Like NFS the run, Battlefield 3, Far Cry 3, Max Payne 3) you will be able to run on high or highest settings on 720p resolutions (laptop screen has higher resolution than 720p and it can handle games on screen's native res) If some game lags, or you have other problems you can always ask for help on k53ta forum, that I mentioned above (because that laptop has basically same parts inside).

I'm happy with my K53TK!

P.S. I got mine for about 550$ (285 LVL) and it has 3-year warranty! It is the best deal you will find, I spent a lot of time trying to find anything similar or better for this price, but closest I got was Acer with less powerful GPU and less powerful CPU. Others have superior CPU's but half the GPU power or same GPU power, but lot weaker CPU.