Good place to find cheap/used laptops

[maxxpower18]

I've only owned 1 laptop, I got it at office depot for about $450, Compaq presario. I thought it was a pretty good deal until I got to my place and started using it, boy was that thing slow as hell. Eventually that laptop was stolen.

Here I am 2 years later looking to get another laptop (I really need one), wanna spend about $450-550. The thing is, I wanna score a really good deal, that is, I want to spend $500 on a laptop and actually get a good laptop, since I plan on abusing the crap out of it. Problem, I'm highly inexperienced when it comes to finding good deals online when it comes to computers. I've tried craigslist but I've had very little luck.

Since you guys are really good with computers, here's what I expect to get done on my laptop: internet internet internet, can't stress that enough, my first laptop was extremely slow. Word, excel, power point, as I'll be using these a lot. Music recording, I use Cool Edit Pro(Adobe Audition), record and edit music is something I do a lot, I don't want my laptop to be breaking down every five minutes when I'm trying to record.

And well, I'll appreciate any suggestions, thanks.

 

[Zap]

For neophyte shopping my suggestion would be to try Dell Outlet. Their normal prices are decent and you do get a warranty which you won't shopping through Craigslist. On occasion they have coupon codes which knock the price down even more.

As for what to choose, besides the normal stuff like screen size, etc. you will definitely want a dual core processor and more than 2GB RAM. A fast drive, especially a hybrid or SSD will help the system feel really snappy, but that's out of your price range.

 

[TimeKeeper]

Till end of July, you can get 12~13% BCB from Tigerdirect. That will make many of NEW i3 / 4GB RAM for less than $500 shipped

Or officedepot has MSI i5
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/850014/MSI-A6200-021US-156-Widescreen-Notebook/ for $550.