Dan, I'll address your other points when I get a chance, but you have complete control over which contacts get synced.

[the following is on my Nexus One, so I don't know what, if anything, is different about the phone app with Motoblur]

-Open the phone app
-press the contact tab
-press the menu button
-press display options
-scroll down to "Choose contacts to display"
-expand the item with the subheading "Google" (most likely your gmail address)

**as you'll see, this is also where you can tell the phone to sync with Facebook contacts or Twitter contacts, if you have a client installed that supports it**

In there you can choose any of your contact groups to be displayed. On second thought, I think the phone will still sync all your contacts, but it'll only display the ones you choose here. Personally I'm fine with that, as it helps with email autocompletes.

Now that you're an Android user, just remember one thing: the menu button is your friend, the menu button is king. It's a huge point of contention between the iPhone and Android camps. I can see where the iPhone people are coming from, as they say it's a bad UI element. I'll agree that it isn't as elegant as the iPhone, but I feel like I have so much control over my apps because of that button. If I ever can't figure out how to do something in any app, the first thing I do is hit that button, and I'm almost always presented with the option I need.