Is it slow compared to a $2000 laptop? Err... yes, definately. Not really a sensible comparison though, is it?

Inferior browser? Are you comparing Opera on the 770 to IE on the laptop? IE is probably one of the poorest browsers on the planet so hardly inferior to Opera - Opera is a very good browser.

The 770 is what it is; it's a great little device for browsing the internet. The version of Flash that comes with the 770 is outdated, but the only people to blame for that situation are Macromedia/Adobe as they haven't released updated Linux versions in a long while.

I'd hazard a guess that the 770 unit you demoed in CompUSA is still running the original release of OS 2005 (there were a total of 3 major releases for OS 2005, each of which improved performance). OS 2006 brings further performance improvements.

Try getting a demo of the 770 running the latest firmware, it's entirely usable for your intended requirements (surfing on the fly).