Best Windows laptop under $500.

[Deer Tracks]

Our non-profit needs to purchase a laptop. It will be used to manage a database and do some basic word processing...no games, graphics editing or video editing. Just shopping around on Amazon, it looks like for under $500, you can get a laptop with a decent processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive but I haven't used a Windows machine in years so I have no idea what to get.
What say you, TBH? Any experiences, recommendations?

[double bogey]

You can get a dell for under $300, and add whichever software you need. Not the best, but priced low. I have bought 2 in the last year for my daughters, either from dell, or office depot.

[double bogey]

Here's one

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/685308/Dell-Inspiron-15-Laptop-156-LED/

[westtexducks]

You can get into some HP laptops for less than fine, and I really like my HP stuff better than the dell computers I have messed with and previously owned.

Go cruise a Best Buy and just pick their brains. Don't have to necessarily buy from them but they are a great resource from my experiences using them.

[Mjjust]

If your a non profit go to techsoup.org. They have some laptops but not necessarily the cheapest but you can get all kinds of software from office to Quickbooks for your nonprofit organization for very cheap.

[DaveS903]

I personally am a fan of Dell products but any of the big name brands will be fine. Find the best sale and go for it.

[huntmaster]

just bought one off the Dell website for 350.

[LakeJake]

We've had good luck with Lenovo laptops in your price range

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[locknload]

go with 16mb ram & SSD harddrive if possible

[Deer Tracks]

go with 16mb ram & SSD harddrive if possible

Thanks, I decided to go that route. We need something that will last a few years so SSD seems like a good idea.
I did check Tech Soup but all they have are older refurbished Windows 7 machines. I don't mind the refurbished part or the Windows 7 part, but didn't want to start with another 5 year old computer.
I ended up ordering an HP 15.6" Full-HD Laptop (6th Generation Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) for $459 from Amazon.