Agree with a poster before me.
What’s he studying?
Depending on whether you really need Office and Vista, you could probably spend half that. But some of it will end up being open source. Open Office. Firefox.
Does he have any thoughts on preference? Would he be comfortable tweaking and updating as he finds out he needs?
Does the university require a Microsoft operating system?
Do they have a list of acceptable machines?
This is a tad outdated. It says they update every 3 months, but it was last updated in February and all systems list XP, yet the flyer listed only Vista Office.
http://www.educ.msu.edu/content/default.asp?contentID=125