A:AnswerIs there access? Yes. Is it easy to get to? No. You need to take the entire laptop apart in order to get to it. If you take your time it is worth the trouble. I did it day 1 and put in a Samsung SSD and it was well worth the effort.
A:AnswerIt would depend on the specifics of the software that you would need for Software Engineering. I would think for most college courses it would be fine and you can't really beat the price. It is powerful enough to stream TV and movies but I wouldn't do moderate to heavy gaming on it. I actually put another stick of RAM in it to boost it to 8GB and it does everything I need it to do. I'm glad I got it.