I like a rigid fork better. So in that BD category, I like the Motobecane Caffe Latte, the Mercier Galaxy Tour (bang for buck there!), and the Fuji Absolute, for example.

Looks like 700x28c tires are on all three of those, while the Zum City I showed you and your Motobecane Elite Trail both have wider 40c tires. I like the 40c tires. They're not too fat but still soften the ride some.

I'd say you can pretty much fly on any of these bikes, on hard pavement. Where you will see a difference with a real flat bar road bike is mainly efficiency over longer hauls. Remember that skinnier tires generally mean a stiffer ride and not so handy on the occasional dirt trail. But any of these bikes would be great commuters. They are just optimized for different things. Well, mine's kind of "optimized" to be a cheap all-arounder, a mutt.