External monitor is a really good idea.

Don’t kid yourself that you won’t want an xAMP stack on your laptop – because you will. My server runs a full LAMP stack but if I’m away from home and writing code then I want to test my work. I’m sure some of the work you’ll be doing will be desktop apps but I suspect you’ll probably gravitate towards the web-based stuff.

By an interesting coincidence Lifehacker did a thing about college laptops today. Might be something interesting in there for you: http://lifehacker.com/5587074/preparing-for-college-tech-essentials-for-your-first-year

(although you’ll laugh at their suggestion that a decent resolution is “at least 1280×720″ – I’d call that an absolute minimum)

@Tawcan – I havent had any issues with Dell monitors. Haven’t read anything bad about MSI’s either. Though both would be the higher 1920×1080 sort of resolution. Robyn has a 15.6″ Dell Inspiron and the screen size is fine for me, I too find that 17″ notebooks are quite large.

When it comes to the Mac, it seems like I would just running Windows more than the MacOS anyway so I might as well just stick with a Windows based notebook.

I’m going to go look at the MSI notebook and the Macbook Pro tomorrow to size them up etc.

Have you look into the option of getting a smaller size laptop for portability and get an external screen when you’re at home? That’s what a good friend of mine does. He’s going through his PhD in ComSci.

I’m assuming you’ll probably do some photo editing stuff on the laptop? How are Dell and MSI’s screens? My MacBook Pro screen is excellent. The colour accuracy is pretty decent.

If you go with Mac you’ll need to get Mac Versions of photo editing software. Not sure if LR license is transferable or not.

Personally I wouldn’t bother with graphic card specs since you probably wouldn’t be running hardcore games on the laptop. You’re not doing any fancy 3D mechanical design either.

17″ will be far too big to cart around transit every day – it’s a desktop replacement.

The resolution is more important than the screen size really – my Asus AS1410 has an 11.6″ screen that’s got the same resolution as the 13″ Macbooks. I cart it around transit very comfortably but appreciate it’s probably too small for many people. But whenever I pickup a 13 or 15″ laptop my first thought is “Ohmygod why the hell would anybody carry this further than across the room”.

LED backlight is a must. Don’t even consider anything else.

You’ll need stacks of memory cos you’ll probably be running Apache, MySQL and multiple browsers simultaneously – if not at the start of the course then at least by the end.

Not sure I’d worry about the speed of the graphics card unless you’re going to play games on it. Even the built-in Intel graphics on the 1410 is adequate for fancy 3D desktop stuff so you’re not going to find yourself held back while programming.