Do you use the middle button to scroll? One finger on the track point and one finger pressing the middle button = effortless scrolling no matter where the cursor is on the screen. Every time I am forced to use a track pad I can't stand having to constantly move the cursor back and forth to the scroll bar (or use the arrow buttons.) I never use my laptops on a desk so a mouse is not an option.
I don't know if I like it enough to pay the same price as a MBA for the Thinkpad X1 though. The MBA is such a slick piece of hardware.
i don't use the middle button, though i probably should. maybe i'll try to. i usually go up/down a page with the space bar (shift + space for up).
scroll bars work nice, but it is barbaric to have to stop, move the cursor to it, (carefully), click and drag it up/down. we are in complete agreement here. this is a form of torture.
on a mac, you simply two-finger swipe up/down to scroll (independent of cursor position). plus, there's awesome inertial scrolling; swipe down quickly to get down a long page, then tap to the pad to stop. swipe slower to scroll slower.
one thing i love about Chrome, is that the address bar is also the search bar. this is so simple, but after you see it and use it, it seems idiotic to do it any other way. (Why doesn't Safari do this yet?! ... Apple is upset they didn't think of it first.)
its the same with the trackpad on a mac, though far from simple, its a pretty sophisticated (and probably expensive (including R&D)) little piece of hardware, which is the only reason i can imagine ALL PCs don't use them by now. there is, of course, a move to multi-touch trackpads going on now, but they're still behind, and it took forever to get going.
anyways, not everyone lives near an Apple store or Best Buy. have you actually tried out the trackpads on the macs?