hi countrykid,
I'll stick my 2pence worth in :)
personally for the relatively small difference in price I think I would go for the more expensive one if the extra money is not a problem.
that aside, as for battery life, you will be lucky to get within about 3/4 of what the makers say the battery will last in normal use, but if you intend to use it as a desktop replacement thats not a issue, but it's recommended to discharge the battery to about 30% every week or so and then recharge it just to keep them in condition.
Hard drives, the bigger the better as always (the natural state of a hard drive is 80+% full no matter how big it is!!) but an external drive is always a good idea too keep a backup of everything on, that way if anything goes wrong you can just format and start again without losing anything. As for the 1gb vs 2gb of ram, well if you do only get 1gb that'll be enough and it's easy to upgrade in the future if needed.
Lastly, there isn't any setting to adjust the sensitivity of a keyboard, they are just switches, on or off, why would anybody make a keyboard pressure sensitive, you either want to type a letter or not, I suspect that particular one either had a faulty keyboard, or just required a heavier touch than you are used to..