You should be able to buy a decent laptop for $800 or less almost anyplace. Dell is a good place to start and if you choose to buy one from them, do a search on google (or your favorite search engine) for dell coupons. I bought my son a Dell laptop to take to college this fall and I found an online coupon for an additional 30% off an already low price. Here's a link to Dell's laptops:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

Cheers,
Bill...