[MRM]

Small world. My son just chose the University of Minnesota instead of Iowa State, but it was a close call. My older son just went to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and we outfitted him with a laptop.

A couple of thoughts. First, considering school technology he will need significant retrofit capabilities. That means DVD players, lots of USB ports, and old fashioned programs and connectivity. He'll need the full Microsoft Office suite, including PowerPoint because that is the language of business, engineering and academia. If he goes to cutting edge technology and forgets about DVDs and USB ports because that's old technology (every one connects on the cloud now days, dad) there will come a day that he can't connect to someone he really needs to share data with.

Second, he won't need a full blown top of the line engineering capable laptop out of the box. As a freshman he'll need a robust computer but one that really just does basic stuff. As he gets into his advanced classes his computing needs will increase, but what he needs a year or two from now will be hard to predict.

Third, you have to balance the advantages of buying the latest greatest device and milking it through the next four years against buying a lower end machine and replacing it at least once during his career.

My strong advice would be to buy a cheaper, yet still robust and capable machine for his freshman year. At the end of his first year he'll have a lot better idea of what he really needs. At that point you can decide whether to go all out and get him a computer that will last him the rest of his college career or split it into cheaper increments. Odds are you won't need to upgrade until the end of his second year, at which point the cutting edge technology will make what's available today look archaic. I think you're wasting your money buying a cutting edge machine for a freshman.