Knowing a lot of people in computer science and software engineering, you'll have no problem completing the curriculum with a $300 netbook. If you want to buy something fancier that's up to you. Having something with 4 to 6GB of RAM can be useful if you need to run a linux VM for a class (I know a few people who had to do it) but 2GB is fine if you just dualboot instead. If they require you to do any programming that requires 3D rendering, parallel processing, or using linux then they should give you access to lab computers that will be able to do whatever you need it to do.
I can tell you that in fall and spring semesters I have very little time to play games. I don't know about other people but I would not recommend buying a gaming laptop.
If I could go back in time and buy a new laptop for college, (I currently have an Inspiron 17R), these would be my criteria:
- Easy to disassemble and service parts - those hard drives trays that are on the side of laptops that require you to only remove 1 or 2 screws to pop out the hard drive are amazing but unfortunately they're mostly on business/enterprise laptops.
- Small and lightweight (not a 17 inch screen)
- Something with long battery life
- 2.4 and 5ghz dual band wireless card
I have 4 computers that I use at college.
- My gaming desktop. It's hooked up to a TV in the living room. I built this with the income from my first job and have upgraded it over the years. Mostly use it for netflix, youtube, spotify, and DVDs, but now that it's the summer again I have time to play games.
- Low power "media center" mini-ITX PC with a 40gb ssd running linux. Sits on my desk and I use it for doing research and classwork. Someone gave it to me for free because they bought a new media center for their TV and the resell value on a barebones mini-ITX machine that was originally worth $150 and has no hard drive is basically nothing. I spent maybe $60 on an ssd for it and another $20 for a wireless card and that's it. The computer actually stutters if you try and do anything as demanding as play a youtube video full screen at 720p, so it's a great computer to use for classwork because you won't get distracted by anything else.
- Laptop I bought my first year of college. It's got 8GB of ram and a widescreen so I could use it for AutoCAD. I switched majors, I mostly use it for browsing the Internet now and occasionally typing papers and running simulations in Multisim. The 8GB is ram is useful for running lots of virtual machines.
- Netbook that I got for free because someone caused a head crash on the hard drive (probably by squeezing the keyboard). They bought it on sale so time required to replace hard drive + parts would cost more than replacing the netbook. Someone gave be an old 16gb ssd for free so I've got the computer working again. Bought a USB GPS for it and put maps and all my car's repair manuals on it, it is now my car/travel computer. Eventually I'd like to build a car mount for it. I increasingly use the netbook around the apartment because a netbook is just such a convenient form factor.
