Apple authorized reseller such as Machines, Harvey Norman, should sell the same as online price. In online store, you can get student discount if you are a student.

Personally if you think about gaming, I'll go for windows. Otherwise if you just want a Mac OS, then go for Mac. I personally prefer Windows because my engineering softwares are mostly Windows based.

Also, there's an Apple Byte forum discussing Macs, this section is mostly Windows laptops.