Buy it directly from apple and use the educational discount. I believe its like $100 bucks or so off the price. I just put a local school down and that was it. Don't buy your ram from apple cause like you said its expensive there. The WiFi will work anywhere a pc's would
afaik if thats what your asking. I never had a problem with it. Don't know too much about the Microsoft word compatibility. I know I can open a word document with Pages on my Mac and I do believe I can save a document as a word document. Hope that helps.