I'll test the laptop patch. But it's very big and most probably it will not apply agains a recent ben-kernel.
Hehe, it already is in then latest 2.4.21-benh2 kernel ;-). You should have a /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode file.
Read <kernel-dir>/Documentation/laptop-mode.txt (wc -l only 72!) for more info, the .sh is a working initscript.
-Thomas