There appears to be a solution to the problem I complained about earlier with Powerbooks running with the lid closed, and I can't tell if this was a recent development (a Mac OS X patch) or if I completely missed this. It appears that today (Mac OS X 10.3.4), a Powerbook running with the lid closed (with external power, video and USB keyboard) will fall asleep gracefully if the power is unplugged first, and will stay asleep as other peripherals are unplugged. Going back from laptop to desktop mode is as easy as putting it to sleep, then plugging the power in last. I seem to recall an older behavior where plugging or unplugging peripherals with a sleeping laptop would cause a wake-up attempt—which would fail and crash the machine if the lid is still closed. From my old entry, it's possible I just never tried it this way, but it seems better behaved now.