There was another thread, another test, I’ll try to find it.
As a laptoper, can’t play with a touchpad.
I'd wholeheartedly suggest looking at getting a USB wireless mouse. They're small enough and cheap enough (around $20 on eBay) that there's no way that I'd do without one. My productivity with a real mouse is so much higher than with the touchpad that it's almost believable.
Another cheap and very handy accessory for a laptop is a USB flash drive. I keep working copies of my documents on it and can switch from my laptop to my home system without ever worrying about accidentally working with an out-of-date file. Since the apps on each system have their own most-recently-used file lists, switching between the two systems is seamless even though they use different drive letters for the flash drive. I use a 2 GB unit that cost me about $15 on eBay. It's well worth the expense. (The only problem that I've had is remembering to toss the drive into my laptop bag after I've been using it on my home system.)