As for scrolling in the browser: I reprogram Opera to use the D-pad as page down, page up instead of down, up, and then it's as smooth and fast as you wish.

Compared to my Palm T3 the difference is that every Palm program starts instantly, while an N800 program can take a second or so (sometimes a bit more for programs that start accessing the network at the same time as they start up, e.g. the email reader).
This is no wonder, as Palm programs start directly from RAM while N800 programs has to be loaded from internal (flash) storage. If you leave them up (iconized) they "start" as quickly as Palm programs (naturally, because now they're in RAM).