Originally Posted by
JD_MTB
If you're going to ride some snow, mud, etc, I'd have to agree with what the og replier said about buying a bike with a belt. Belt drives are a lot less maintenence, sure, they don't make as much speed as chains... but top speed is irrelevant here. The new belt mechanisms use carbon belts now. Marin has a Fairfax model that comes with a belt and is a really good city bike. It is like $500-700 as well. Definitely consider.
Though if you want to up the ante a bit, you could get one of the BMC's with flat bar. Alpenchallenge are the name of the series, they look kinda nice in red. Closer to $1.1-5k than $500 though.
Agree on the belts they are nice, disagree on Marin's use of them. They used plastic belt rings on a commuter bike and we had 3 of them fail within a short period and they refused to admit it was a problem with anyone else and I could smell the dookie through the phone. It was a fine bike for the low price but not worth it for commuting.