All your points can be answered by simply this:
Do you want to spend 1 hour on an assignment or 30 mins.
Think about it...
Specifically, on video: If are you a archetictual student? You need more than on board video. That could be said for most student types, considering their field, chemistry, engineering, computer science, math graphing, design studies of any kind. There is a lot to be desired in video ability by modern education software and design software. Or, maybe after studies you want to see a movie? On board video handles that, but barely, very barely. Do it better. Get the right equipment for the job.
Also, batteries from Dell in my example are $99 for the bigger version. Many here have stated you don't always have a plug available as a student. Get the bigger one.
Hard drives: There's more to loading a file than just scraping the data off the hard drive. 50% more speed helps the virus check, the program .dll loads as you open the file and a ton other functions. Hard drives are said to be the last main bottle neck in modern computers. Don't buy into oblivion and legacy equipment.
Blue-Tooth? I guess you don't need the hard drive either, why not remove that too? Consider a lot of college students today will most likely use Yahoo's or MSN's new voice IM to talk to their parents and friends back home. (or Vonage, or whatever...) With blue-tooth you have an easy way to add a blue-tooth headset to make your conversation private. There are other uses for blue tooth also. Like cell phone network connectivity. You need blue-tooth. Period.
All I say is spend $300 more and you'll gain twice the computer. Money well spent. Not money wasted, like the $700 versions in the article. Spend only $700 now and you'll be buying another laptop before you college career is over and you have a degree. Spend $300 extra now and you'll last the full degree.
I think you are overstating things a little bit. When I had my Thinkpad, it had 16MB shared graphics memory with an onboard chip. I was able to play many games like Warcraft 3, WoW, Lineage 2, etc with no problems (and this was 2 years ago). YOU DO NOT NEED A VIDEO CARD TO PLAY MOVIES, THAT IS CRAP! My onboard video was fine for playing movies. I watched many movies on my laptop often hooking it up to a TV at a friends house. As for educational video requirements, if you are doing any kind of 2D rendering including graphics, etc, you do not need a video card for that. I used many different programs while in school (taking comp sci) and not once did any of them tax my onboard video.
As for hard drives, if it is a small increase in cost, then I say go for it. but if it is going to cost your another $100 or more (additional 15% in cost) just to get a faster hard drive, then I would say forget it. So programs take a little longer to load, big deal. How much time do we really spend waiting for programs to load? Run your virus scan at night. You certainly wouldn't want to run it while on battery.
I think your bluetooth argument is a little biased. I use a laptop now that has bluetooth and I have a bluetooth phone and many of my friends cars have bluetooth and I have never used it and none of my friends use it in their cars. Yes it is useful to some people in certain instances and if you specifically want to use something that requires bluetooth, then by all means get bluetooth. I am just saying that to say that EVERYBODY needs it, regardless of situation is a bunch of crap. This is a budget machine, if you don't need it, don't get it.
I agree that if you have the option to get a better battery for cheap, go for it, its worth it.
Video card, hard drive speed, bluetooth are not reasons that the low budget student will feel the need to upgrade their laptop anytime soon. I seriously doubt that a student will say 1 year from now "man I wish my hard drive was faster, I'd better dump another $700 into a new laptop". Again, if any upgrade option is a small price, it is worth considering, or if the student is going to have a specific need (video, BT, storage space, etc) then by all means it is worth the upgrade cost. As for the unforseen, you can always go buy a better hard drive in the future if you need it, or a bluetooth card for that matter.