Laptop manufacturers don't necessarily design cheap student laptop computers specifically for college or high school use. Any laptop computer could be considered a student laptop. College or high school students have to decide how they want and need to use their laptop computer. In general I would recommend a dual-core processor, at least 1 GB memory, at least a 120 GB hard drive, a DVD/CD burner, 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN, Microsoft Office, and the Windows Vista Premium operating system. You can get cheap student laptop computers for under $500 but the specifications won't meet what I outlined above. If that's OK with you and you just want to surf the internet, send and receive email, listen to and burn music, watch DVDs and videos, and download or save a reasonable amount of files then check out the cheapest laptops on the market today.
There are several good options for choosing a cheap student laptop that will meet your needs and wants. I'm going to start you off with one