Power Management on Sony Vaio SZ 61
After upgrading to the recently released gnome power manager 2.6.26.4, suspending and hibernating my Sony Vaio SZ 61 after a period of inactivity finally works. Note that suspension and hibernation already worked as is. Linux has always lacked decent power management in comparison with Windows, but now this option finally works, it can save a lot of battery time while working on battery. The update also fixed the broken turning off the screen display.
I can easily squeeze a respectable 3 hours out of my battery with 100% brightness. This can be increased to at least 4 hours when working on a lower, but still workable brightness. I hope developers will continue to work on power management so that I can get to work 5 hours without plugging in the cord as in Windows. I believe work points are automation of powering down/off usb devices, hard disks, sound card and wireless network card, things that can be done manually in the console if you have the expertise.
Looking forward to the next stable gnome release 2.28 with hopefully some new power management features.