5 laptops priced under $500 at TigerDirect.com

I'm on the TigerDirect mailing list, so I get a push e-mail every day with whatever bargains they're offering.

Today's TigerDirect e-mail caught my eye because they're calling this "Back to School Laptop Week Special Event!" and have five laptops — two from Gateway, one each from Compaq, Acer and Lenovo — under $500. The Lenovo, with 2 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive and Pentium Dual-Core CPU at 2 GHz is only $399 — and only available through Friday, so if you like Lenovo (the PC brand formerly made by IBM) &dmash; and I do — you'd better get on that one.

Although I'm not the biggest fan of Gateway (and yes, I do own one, circa 2002), they tend to offer a lot of specs for the money, and the Gateway Dual Core 3 GB laptop on sale at TigerDirect for $479 features, as the description suggests, 3 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive (that's quite huge for a laptop), and an HDMI output, which could come in handy if you want to send HD-quality content from PC to TV. It's also a cool off-red color.

The Acer laptop that's part of this deal also features 3 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive. It has a pretty good CPU (AMD Athlon 64 at 1.6 GHz) and is only $399.

I'd have a hard time choosing between the five sub-$500 laptops in this offer. I'm almost glad I don't have to — they all look pretty sweet and they underscore one thing I'm always telling people:

You don't have to — and shouldn't — spend more than $500 on a laptop computer.

(Images: Above, the Gateway T-1424u. Below, the Acer Aspire AS5517-5997.)