What you are paying for in the Meade is the "auto alignment" system. The Celestron requires you find three guide stars and enter the time and your location so the telescope computer can track and orientate it's self properly, the Meade scope has all these functions automated so you simple push a button and the scope goes through the set-up process by its self, and then you are ready to go.
IMO - the auto alignment is NOT worth it. Once you understand how to set it up, and are able to competently find your way around the night sky, the Celestron should take you two minutes to set up. If you are going to spend $1500 bucks, go for more aperture
As far as the optics, they should be about equal.
Now you mention you want a terrestrial scope out of this - you may find the computerized mount to be cumbersome and annoying to use if you want to just point the scope at a distant mountain or something along those lines. You can do it perfectly well, its just somewhat slow and can be annoying using a little paddle when you really just want to point it with your hands. I would consider getting an EQ mount for this. They are more expensive, but they offer the smoothest tracking you can get and are very nice to work with.
So if you're comfortable spending the extra cash and want the computerized mount, I'd go up to the 8 inch scope:
http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?CatID=13&ProdID=416
If you don't want to do any work and want to push 1 button, then buy the meade.
If you want to consider a more traditional EQ mount with a SCT OTA (schmidt-cassegrain optical tube assembly), I would check out some of the products offered by Orion, something along these lines:
http://www.telescope.com/control/pr...hSession=05ca56d5-e658-43e0-86d7-8ca3ffeac4b6
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http://www.telescope.com/control/pr...hSession=05ca56d5-e658-43e0-86d7-8ca3ffeac4b6