I need to get a laptop to take with me to and from class. I'm going to school in New York, so I'll be carrying it around in my bag on trains and such. It doesn't need to do any heavy lifting/game playing, just want a very portable computer that I can take to class and use on airplanes and such to watch movies. My main requirements are:
light
cheap(ish). Sub $500
Anyone have any good suggestions on what I should get? I haven't been paying much attention to what's been coming out lately. I'll probably buy one in the next couple of months.

Well my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 has been one of the best machines I've ever bought, I'd definitely recommend one of those, at least here dell also give student discounts so a good look could make the price a bit lower still. Really light, nice and portable, runs word like a dream, can do light gaming (sanitarium works perfectly), can run video fairly well... and if my giant hands* can adapt to the small keyboard then anyone's can (feels kinda weird to be using my big laptop's keboard again).
*The original xbox controller that everyone bitched about for being huge was the only controller I've ever used that actually fit my hands

HP Mini 311 (ION version).
If you go netbook you really want an ION one for multimedia (decoding video files) also with the new version of flash (currently in public beta) it can use the GPU to help with the flash decoding. Good for Hulu, youtube, and any of those sites.
The one down side is the lack of an optical drive, so any movies you want to watch will have to be ripped before hand. :)

Thanks, I'll take a look at both of those at some point. Don't really care about the optical drive, I figured netbooks wouldn't have one anyway.

i just got a acer notebook laptop for close to 450 by b&h.com. it works great and is a bit larger than a netbook. my friend has a acer netbook and the screen is just too small for me to use and type with.