Hey duders need some recommendations on what laptop to buy. I'm looking at spending around $500 for decent laptop for basically schoolwork and some light gaming. Thanks for the help!

My wife got an Acer laptop last year and the hard drive failed already. So I currently am recommending against their products.

I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T420 a couple of years ago, and I really like the sturdy clean design of the Lenovo laptops. My use was basically the same as yours. The T420 isn't a gaming powerhouse but works for most older PC titles. You could get a pretty decent secondhand Thinkpad for that price, even a later model. They tend to be a bit heavy though. But if weight and size isn't an issue I would look up the Thinkpad W530, which came out in 2012 but is still a pretty powerful machine. If you want something that's light then the Lenovo Yoga line is also very nice laptops. Gave my sister a Yoga for Christmas last year and got pretty jealus straight away, they are more notebook-type laptops though so gaming might have to be even "lighter". I got my sister one of those SNES USB controllers and we play some SNES roms on it when I visit her. Dunno how well the Yoga would play 3d games or modern 2d games, but my guess it could play most 2d indie titles as well.

to @herman_mariusen Lenovo makes some really good hardware but their repeated goofs with malware and adware going on units prior to shippping out a few times is a bit ridiculous and has made me lose a lot of trust for the brand. I've always liked Asus stuff, and the $500 price point can be a little challenging to really nail something for gaming in all honesty.

If you can stretch a little, this looks like a solid unit: Asus - 2-in-1 13.3" Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 6GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Black Hairline

And we use Probooks at work which do the job very well, but again, don't count on solid gaming performance from near any laptop under $1k and even then it'll be iffy. Here's a decent ProBook if you've got a MicroCenter around: HP ProBook 450 G3 15.6" Laptop Computer - Silver or if you're quick on the draw and have an MC around try to find this; Toshiba Satellite L55-C5392 15.6" Laptop Computer..

These days you'll probably be able to play some older games but again, I'd focus on a solid multitasking unit, i5/i7 personally are my leanings. Build a tower at home for the gamings, or get this beast (I reviewed it and it's a monster, I loved it): MSI - GS40 Phantom 14" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive + 128GB Solid State Drive - Aluminum Black :)

Happy hunting!