Well I just bought a laptop last week. Sim games for the most part. Nothing like Crysis. I just wanted to play them in high detail without having them lag. This new one is doing a fine job. I got an Intel Core i5-420CPU at 1.70GHz
With 8GB of Ram with Intel HD Graphics 4000
Those specs are incorrect. The i5-400 series is from the Arrandale generation, which is 4 years old and came with Intel HD graphics. HD4000 is 2 generations newer and only integrated into Ivy Bridge dies.
I think you actually have an i5-3317U. This is an Ivy Bridge ULV CPU that should work just fine for most purposes. AMD integrated graphics chips are typically a bit better for gaming, but the HD4000 is no slouch, and Intel CPUs are vastly superior for most other tasks.
What's the screen resolution? If you only payed $500 then I'd expect a glossy 1366x768 display, which I find atrocious and completely unusable for anything other than gaming and watching videos in a dark room. If this is the case then I'd say you got an average deal.