Keep in mind that whatever college she attends will have some sort of discount on software, and generally hardware. Most have deals with Apple and either Dell, Gateway, or IBM. They all have recomendations on their website, which you need to investigate before you do anything. While I highly doubt their requirements are higher than anything you can get in that price range, as most allow for Celerons and such, it might be a determining factor, depending on her intended major. While a laptop does have a cool-factor which most young people appreciate, it's advantages go well beyond that. She can take it to class, move it to type papers (very important, actually. Being tied to a desk is a real pain sometimes), easily bring it home on vacation (also important if she has stuff to do), etc.. A desktop has its place, but generally only if expandability is required, screen real estate is important, or she's doing some computationally intensive work. That laptop, while cheap, makes some big compromises. 128MB of RAM isn't enough anymore. I wouldn't get anything less than 256, and you're still hobbling the system until you get up to around 512, and that costs money for low profile dimms. 20GB hard drive, while certainly adequate, will probably not work for any Kazaa user. While colleges are increasingly prohibiting the use of these services, she can easily fill it with crap. I can't even live with 40GB. When she goes, warn her what she does on Kazaa and the like. College kids are getting sued, and she could get kicked out, or at least punished, if she gets caught.
Z