Thanks and one question to start

Greetings, Applevis community.
After reading a lot about OS X and Mac machines I finally decided to buy mac. Basically it is going to be my main machine that'll be used for reading, writing and entertainment. Actually I am still confused about the various mac variants, so when I went to the store I detailed my needs and expectations and the staff there recommended a Mac Air 11. This is for its weight as I have problems with backbone, and the decent battery life, as well as the price tag. Was their recommendation fair enough?
Anyway, I am a PhD student, and lots of my time on computers is basically to type and read. So my future questions will be basically about these two activities.
To start, may I ask about strange thing I am facing with Pages? I have a document in .DOCX format, it is fine on Pages. What is strange is that the word count on Pages is different from what's there in MS Word. The difference is not that large but it does make me wonder if my submissions for assignments and researches are bound to the word count limit set by supervisors.
I have been trying with many various documents, and the problem persists.
Additionally, I am wondering why the inverted commas when typed on Windows are converted to some O letter variant (might be something like O Acute).
Thanks everybody for the wonderful resource of information about Apple products, and please admins feel free to move this to where it suits better.
Mohammad