It's been a while since I've bought a laptop with a usable trackpad. For example I just got a Dell, a $1,500 Studio 15 not a crappy low-end one, and the trackpad is broken. I've even had it replaced but it still refuses to move the cursor about 50% of the time. Mice are preferable to every trackpad I've used, even Apple ones.
Of course this doesn't address things trackpads can do that mice can't, like multitouch gestures. But for pointing quickly and accurately, I always have a mouse paired to my laptop.
The Apple trackpads are large at 5+ inches and responsive and reliable. I love mine. I had multi-touch and gestures hacked into a Linux driver on my old Dell five years ago but it was never nice like this.
And Apple also makes mice that do gestures and multi-touch on the touch responsive top surface.
Gosh, I sound like a fanboy here but I really despise the fruit-based company for their evil corporate practices. You just can't beat their hardware, though.
PC trackpad quality has gone down the drain since everyone started to implement multitouch. Multitouch never works properly on cheap PC laptops, and the crappy drivers they bundle with such laptops make it a PITA to perform ordinary tasks like dragging and dropping. I could drag and drop more reliably on my 2001 laptop than I can on my multitouch-enabled 2010 laptop with the dreadful HP "clickpad".
Of course this doesn't address things trackpads can do that mice can't, like multitouch gestures. But for pointing quickly and accurately, I always have a mouse paired to my laptop.