Hey, i have a couple of questions about ubuntu witch i'm running on a dell latitude d600. I can't seem to find any power management options... are they not there? or am i just not looking the right place?

In windows i had an alps touchpad driver whitch made a world of difference when using the touchpad, it was more precise, the movement seemed more smooth and it also had a function so that i could launch different app's by pressing on the corners of the touchpad.
Is something similar available for linux?

p.s i'm a newbie

I think there is no setting in the Ubuntu's own system settings GUI regarding power management (PM), but you can use the acpi or apm sytem to manage PM events and there are also many tools connected with these systems. I use acpi, which is probably also your case, if you have the default Ubuntu kernel and settings. Try 'lsmod | grep acpi' on command line and if you get anything, you have acpi modules loaded.
Acpi system is newer and has more features over older apm, but may be less reliable especially with some older hardware.

I do not know what you want to change in power management, so just few hints:
1. Scripts to power down, hibernate, wake up and so on are located in /etc/acpi, so for example to enable hibernating from the gui, just create a shell script with command 'gksudo /etc/acpi/hibernate.sh' and place it on your desktop or drop it somewhere on your Gnome/KDE panel.
2. There are many tools to support/manage PM, try to search packages with 'acpi' 'power' 'batt' and so on in their name or description using Synaptic.
3. The file to configure acpi is /etc/default/acpi-support. With my notebook, for example, the suspend-to-memory method of ACPI-SLEEP PM event did not work correctly, so I had to commet out one line in the file and replace it like this:

*****
# Change the following to "standby" to use ACPI S1 sleep, rather than S3.
# This will save less power, but may work on more machines
#ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=mem
ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=standby
*****

Hope this helps as a starting point.

As for the touchpad, mine works out-of-the box fine, including the feature of scrolling when moving finger over the right edge up and down. But I have different notebook and probably other touchpad in it. I noticed I have installed package 'xorg-driver-synaptics', but I do not remember if I installed it myself or if it was preinstalled and do not know if it makes any difference for me or not. So what follows is just few ideas, not supported by experience...
It is possible, that the feature of your touchpad with starting apps with the tap-in-the-corner is done in hardware by simulating keyboard presses. In that case it might be configurable the same way as you can do with special keys or custom key-combinations in your desktop. Try if xev command can catch something when you tap in the corner (run it from a console emulator). If it can, it should be possible.
Otherwise you would need a special driver or application for your touchpad. I know i had seen something already. Start with serching word 'touchpad' in Synaptic, then try website of manufacturer of your notebook and your touchpad. The last intance is Mr. Google...