You might want to find out whether your school will have macs or PC's beforfe you choose (I think most schools use PC - at least the ones around here). It's nice to put all your work/papers on a flash drive and print it out on the school's paper (trust me, you'll use a ton )

I've heard good things about acer and toshiba in the lower end of the price spectrum. I really like my dell desktop, but I really don't use it for anything more complicated than internet and word-processing.