Computers - Kids in College or headed there?

The completely truthful answer is that unless she is a video gamer or is heavy into video editing, pretty much ANY laptop out there will be more than sufficiently powerful for anything that she will do on it.

So, the big questions become monitor size & resolution, price, and whether she would prefer a Mac or a Windows machine.

What might be really nice is one of the newer machines that is both a tablet and a notebook depending upon how you have the monitor turned.

Check to see if the school she is going to is starting to do e-textbooks. If they are, the laptop needs will be limited to writing papers. My oldest is in his second year. All his text books, assignments, mail, etc. are on his iPad. It was issued to them (for a fee) at orientation. I gave him my old laptop, the only apps he uses it for are Word, Excel, and Firefox.

Now my youngest is at an engineering high school and uses AutoCad, Inventor, and compilers for programming. He's got a spiffy new Lenovo thinkpad with i7 processor and 12gb RAM. He's a year away from college and this will go with him.

So it depends entirely on her course of study and what the school requires. Less weight and good speakers are always a plus.

Some schools require a certain laptop, or have purchase programs where students can choose from a small assortment of laptops, which the school can support.  I would wait until she decides on what school she's going to, and then get the computer that her school recommends.

Excellent.  Thanks for all the advice.  She is definitely going for the English writing thing. I'm hoping she ends up at U of Mich so I'll check into their recommendations.