Our sump pump finally shat the bed. The float switch has been bad for a while, but now it trips the GFCI as soon as it's plugged in.

This is my first house so I've never done this before, but it seems pretty straight forward. I can handle the PVC pipe hookups just fine, and I know I need a decently powerful pump because it's located in our basement, and the bottom of the sump is another ~3 feet down, so it's looking at probably 11-12 feet of lift to where the pipe comes out the side of the house. I'm looking at 3/4 to 1 hp models. My questions are more related to pump design and placement.

Some of the pumps in the store have this newfangled electronic microprocessor switch, as opposed to the older style float on a lever arm. Of course the box says the microprocessor switch is better and will be longer lasting, but is that actually true? Anyone have experience with this?

Regarding placement... the sump has a plastic liner around the cylinder, and towards the bottom is a ring of holes to allow water to seep in. There is always "some" water in the bottom, below the level that would normally switch on the pump, but it only takes a small amount of rain for that to rise, and if we get a couple rainy days the water will come up a foot or two in the sump (with the old pump with the bad float switch that I had to manually activate). If I place the new pump at the same depth the old one sits at, I think it's going to be cycling at a pretty high rate. Do I need to play around with how deep I place the pump, or can I just set it all the way down and let it take care if itself?

Another issue was that I don't think there is a check valve in there now, or if there is, it's bad. When the pump shuts off, all the water in 11-12 feet of 1.5" PVC dumps back into the sump. I'm sure that was contributing to the baseline water level and higher cycling rate, so hopefully a working check valve will also help.