1. A track pad input device, comprising: a capacitive track pad sensor having a plurality of sensing elements, each sensing element associated with a region of the capacitive track pad sensor; a data acquisition circuit electrically coupled to the capacitive track pad sensor for selectively encoding digital capacitance values for each of the plurality of sensing elements; and a communication circuit for transmitting the digital capacitance values to a host processor for processing, wherein the host processor is also at least partially responsible for executing user-level tasks.