Buy something old that runs windows xp. Should be possible with that pricetag. E-bay is your friend.

Hop on craigslist and buy one thats "new in box" (fell off the truck).

Found one a few weeks back with an i3 and radeon gfx thats pretty nice for $200 as a graduation gift

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need too good specs to run NF.

^^^^Agree.  You don't need a fancy machine to run NF2.  I am running it happily on a 7 year old laptop with IntelGMA3000 graphic.  Any machine runs Windows XP should be fine, just make sure you have 1GB memory.

Get a thinkpad T42.

Keep it under 1GB ram. I ran it with 768mb.

I played HAs and 128ship AW rooms with no lag, and i crashed once in a blue moon.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2520

http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=thinkpad%20t42&clk_rvr_id=355997939954

Off topic?

I would also go with a laptop that has AMD processor and graphics instead of Intel. It doesn't heat up as much, it's better for gaming, and it's about $200-300 less than intel processors at the same level.

Also find one with 4 gigs of RAM or better, or one that is expandable up to 8 or even 16. There are actually some cheap laptops out there with RAM expandable to 16.

Ignore the people that don't have a clue. Navyfield on its own regularly gets near and upwards of a gig of ram.

Ram (DDR3) is cheap nowadays.

If you run Vista/W7, you need more RAM to deal with that.

Laptops; Are fine for being portable and the odd casual gaming, but aren't designed for gaming; Components running at max for long periods in a small, poorly cooled space is never a good idea.

I would recommend a desktop; You can get desktops really cheap nowadays; especially in the US.

Processor wise; Go at least duel core and 2Ghz or above.

GPU; get a dedicated one, but you don't need super high end. 

Lj, have you tried running NF on an earlier machine with older parts and less RAM?