I bought the cheapest, simplest little laptop I could find at Frys just because I needed an airgapped Windows solution a couple of years back. It was an eMachi

I bought the cheapest, simplest little laptop I could find at Frys just because I needed an airgapped Windows solution a couple of years back. It was an eMachines (Acer) D620, and I think it cost me about $300. This was almost 4 years ago. It isn't sleek or shiny, but it does run Linux just fine. I would hope you could find at least that much of a machine for no more than that much money today, and that's new. If you're talking about used, it might be far, far less. It won't win any races or beauty contests, but it's not supposed to. What is "web development" to you? To me, that calls for a Linux box running Apache and the basics of being able to edit, build, run, and test code: my text editor, a compiler, the usual libraries, and my build tool. Oh, that and a recent browser, so X11. That's about it. Your mileage will vary.