[curiousuburb]

Get the RAM from a 3rd party (NewEgg or Crucial) and you'll save $ vs even the educationally discounted Apple RAM... spend the extra on an iPod 60Gb and you can use its drive for 'emergency' backup of data.

You'll get a 30 day trial version of iWork anyway, and once you've used Keynote, you'll probably never go back to PowerPoint... but I'm not sure if you'd get credited with the edu discount on iWork after the fact. I think if you bought it in the same educational order with your 'book, you would get a few beans off retail. Might not be a big difference.

Ditto on SKMDC's comments about waiting until the end of your warranty year before buying Applecare...

And don't sweat the distinction between the PB's native spanning ability and the iB's native mirroring ability... you can apply the spanning hack from Screen Spanning Doctor to emulate the pricier feature at no cost, enabling dual-display.

If you can wait, however... the PBs are overdue for a bump which may see more VRAM and/or a heftier GPU... doesn't sound like you need it, but it would improve the 'book's long term resale value slightly.