My wife is looking to buy a laptop for school so after some searching she found:

http://www.buy.com/prod/acer-aspir [...] 53291.html
for $545

and

http://www.buy.com/prod/acer-trave [...] 89942.html
for $599

Battery life is imperative (our last laptop was a Sony Vaio that cost $1700 and the battery charge lasted only 2 hours) and the only applications she plans on running is office and firefox (thus we're trying to keep the price in the 500-600 range). These laptops look good to me but I don't know jack about laptops (as evidenced by that $1700 door stop).

Do either of these models pass muster for the price, and if so which one would you recommend?

I also found:
http://www.buy.com/prod/acer-trave [...] caid=17820
for $585 but I truly loathe Intel and besides if I remember correctly, those chips drain more power than AMDs.

Thanks in advance for input and advice,
Russ

I'd say any of them would perform just the same. Battery life I'd give to the Celeron M actually not the other way around.

So really unless you know why you want the more expensive laptops don't bother, the celeron may have a bit better performance or battery life, but we're talking about minor differences. The Celeron is the bestter choice on paper, but in real life I don't know if the practical difference would be noticeable.

PS, edited your links to be clickable.