The steel fork on my Fuji Absolute 2.1 does a really nice job of dampening the vibration. The weight difference on a bike like this to me is a non-issue when simply talking about the weight difference of the forks. The bike is still very agile on the steel fork and 700x32 tires. I ride mostly pavement, but will do some riding on paths through the woods and crushed stone. No issues at all.

I'm about 215#, and was a little uncertain about going with a carbon fork (probably just because I was a noob getting back into riding and was a little uneducated about these things). Bottom line, I like the steel fork.