Laptops, power management, and Ubuntu

Quick update, in case it helps someone else. It seems that my Samsung drive ignores hdparm
settings unless you first do:

  sudo smartctl -o on /dev/sda

Don't ask me why. It makes no sense. But it worked. My load cycle count has finally stopped
increasing. At this point, my drive seems to be ignoring the hdparm -B parameters (stuck at
128 according to hdparm -I), but seems to be paying attention to -S (not fully confirmed).
When I suspended for 10 minutes, my load cycle went up by exactly one, which is a good sign.

Here is my forum post (basically what I just said here):
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3825166&postco...

At this point, I suspect that if I can get my system to stop accessing the drives every few
seconds, the heads will park when idle, as they should. Next quest: Find a good guide to how
to configure relatime. Why is that so hard to find?