I'm helping a friend pick out a laptop... She's into dell for some reason (apparently they have good customer service), and she's looking through the refurbished ones. The problem is that they all look like they suck. She's looking at Pentium M and Celeron processors clocked at like 1.7GHz. I'm inclined to tell her to go for this other, new laptop from Compaq/HP with an Athlon clocked at 2.0. Both have 512 RAM, 60 gig hard drive, and all other components are approximately the same. So my question is: how are Pentium M's and Celerons clocked in comparison to Athlons? (Battery life is not a variable we're concerned with btw). And how good is HP/Compaq's customer service?

I've never dealt with laptops much, and never needed to know enough about hardware to answer these questions. I've only ever needed to know enough to play w/ the guts of my desktop. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!