[JavaBrewer]

JYL, I had the same sorts of questions when my son Zack studied engineering. From my experience the incoming freshman won't be working with hard hitting programs/files from the start. Half or more of their workload will be G.E. courses required for a 4 year. I would send him to school with what he currently has, or something pretty basic but functional, and let him absorb the program and ask the Junior/Senior folks in the program what they use. Zack studied aeronautical engineering at ISU and frankly most of the computer intensive work was done in labs that were all kitted out with needed hardware. I'm fairly skeptical that college undergrad students are going to be messing around with file sizes that challenge a typical mid range performance computer. YMMV.

My son went with a 3 year old MacBook pro 13", easy to carry around the campus and enough to run programs he used. Reality is that for lots of current college work students use Google Drive or similar drop box setup to share files and/or submit coursework for grading to professors.