Do community college transfer students have a disadvantage when it comes to graduate school admissions? I spent a year at a community college working in industry straight out of high school. I recently got into a top cs program and will be attending starting spring 2015. However, the school only gave me until spring 2017 to finish my degree, which means I will be at the 4-year university for 5 semesters. Will I be at a disadvantage when applying to top graduate schools in comparison to my peers, who have been at their university for 4 years? I am a CS major who will attend a top cs program.

Also, due to my transfer situation, I feel that I am severely disadvantaged in terms of research opportunities. This is because for most of the labs at my school, professors have formal requirements which often entail good grades in high-level electives specific to the research. Unfortunately, I probably won't have time to complete many of these electives, and even if I do, it will most likely be during my last year. I want to get started in research as soon as possible, but I also know that I don't have much specific experience for my fields of interest (which include AI, NLP, machine learning, and data mining). How should I reconcile these gaps, and what tips do you have for a new student getting engaged in research?
Simply having attended a community college earlier in your academic career is not going to hurt you if you have a degree, good grades, good letters of recommendation, etc. from a top program as well as all the other stuff that matters like good tests scores and research experience. Having attended a lower status school is not a permanent black mark and simply will not matter if your subsequent work proves that you are top-notch student and researcher.

Having less research experience than your peers who are applying for the same graduate positions will put you at a disadvantage. Ben Bitdiddle's answer on how you might go about getting that given your relatively shorter period of time at a research university is good as are the answers to many other related questions on this site about getting research experience as an undergraduate.