It looks like they've had to bring in a large collection of vendors in order to solve the technical challenges (Remedy, McAfee, MS's AV & System Center, Aruba Airwave) and functional requirements (iTunes, MS Office, Adobe CS4).
So with that suite of software, will the netbooks perform reasonably well? (Mine would not).
I very much doubt those machines will last 4 years. Even if they are taken well care of by the student, other students might not (so you get to keep your lunch money but not your netbook). And with only 2GB of RAM, it won't be able to run any of those high-end programs in just a few years unless they aren't updated to the newest versions.