Best road-bike bang for buck?
The bike you linked to is solid enough depending on what you are after. It will certainly stand up to commuting use and will be a vast improvement over a traditional mountain bike. If you are more interested in touring you’ll probably want to upgrade some of the components and “accessorize”, but at that price you have some room in the budget for this. Granted it was 12 years ago, but my mid-line Bridgestone touring bike priced ~$550 has well over 45K mixed-use miles on it and other than replacing the cassette this spring has been solid. OTOH, finding a middle-top tier, new-used road bike is certainly doable and would definitely pay dividends in the long run.
What everybody said — my daily rider is a bike I paid $20 for at Salvation Army* — road bikes especially seem to be underpriced at thrift shops. Be prepared to do work on it and replace the tires/tubes/chain/brake pads etc. if you go that route. Also most of the good road bikes I see there are 15 years or older. As for new bikes: components on even entry-level (non-Big-Box) bikes today are pretty good and upgrading the odd component that bugs you could still be cheaper than getting the more-expensive next-step-up bike. So when going for factory-fresh, I would, as you’ve already suggested, focus on fit and ride vs. money. Also, if the saddle on a new bike sucks (they often do) you can use the saddle from one of your other bikes until you save up for a better one (you can’t ride more than one bike at a time, anyway.) Another thing to consider, if you’re the clipless type: will you need new shoes to match the new bike’s pedals? I avoid this problem by having the same kind of pedal on al
