My daughter will start college in the fall.

Will your daughter be taking a program of study where software on a Windows platform is clearly superior to or inferior to equivalent software on the Mac platform?

Or is her target future employment going to be in an industry where the preponderance of the computers is one platform or the other?

By the way, when it comes to "Microsoft Office", you have to dig into the details. Some machines come with Microsoft Office installed and have a limited time trial. And some versions have just a selected assortment of applications. See http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/office-2010-which-suit...

I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised about the different product mixes at different prices--Windows 7 also comes with different feature sets for different prices, and all called Windows 7.

If the products installed aren't complete or aren't fully licensed, check if the institution has a site license that the students can make use of--many do.