If I was going to go with a brand name, I'd go Toshiba or maybe IBM. My IBM is 4.5 years old and running fine (just a little slow), but I don't know if they still make them as good.
If battery life is important I'd go with Centrino. If the laptop is running on batteries the Celeron and Pentium 4 will have the same bus speed, so the difference would probably not be noticed. The P4 will ramp the bus speed back up when it is plugged in however for more power.


Devin