Regarding the joystick !ouse control the way GPD did it was a bit different from your typical "joystick cursor with acceleration" it was more limited linear speed and if you wanted to go faster you held a certain shoulder button. The l and r main shoulder buttons were left and right click and the remaining shoulder button was middle click (or something like this). In that way you had access to do all of the things you would do on a mouse and the speed control was very reactive rather than hoping you hit enough strength on the right portion of an acceleration curve or anything like that.

The touchpad isn't bad but it's much more difficult to do certain normal desktop mouse related things like most small track pads are. Particularly when it comes to actions combined with wide motion such as click and drag select then right click.