Bah, screw the laptop thing. I go to a "wired" school, and the only time I see laptops are when people need to do school work, but don't have time to go to their room or public labs without interferring with other committments, such as the 20 min window they have for lunch or dinner. As to the CDR and DVD players, just make sure your desktop has them, and you'll be fine. The only time I can see a laptop being needed is when you have a presentation that a) doesn't have a computer and projector setup, or b) you are off-site. In those cases, you can borrow a laptop from a friend. My school is in bed with Gateway, but all they do is recommend that if you want a brand-new system is to go through Gateway, since St. Olaf is a preferred customer, and all students, faculty, and staff get a 2% discount off the academic prices. As too the Intel CPU requirement, I think it's more along the lines of no iBooks, though even that is stupid, since they can use MS Office, which is what almost all college campuses use. My school has a computer owner rate of 90% in the first-years and 75% in the seniors, with something like 15% of the campus having two or more computers (I only have one myself).
Again, screw the laptop, tell them to f-off, and get a Palm Pilot if you need to take in-class notes in an electronic fashion. Geez, not even my school is stupid enough to require laptops for certain majors... and we have some pretty bad major requirements (like B.A Music Ed majors needing to prove that they can play at the same level as B.M Performance majors, which spend all their time on music, as opposed to Music Ed, which is a more Liberal Arts education (hence the B.A. part of it). This makes performance auditions required to be allowed into the major... argh... nevermind). Anyway, keep building your dream machine, and if you require a laptop, just tell them that your computer has moved from your house to dorm many times, and is therefore mobile.
-SammyBoy