One tricky thing in Linux is getting the power management settings correct in Linux. Things like CPU throttling, battery and LCD power management are little difficult to configure with the standard tools that ship with any distribution. A little knowledge of how the kernel handles power management will go a long way in configuring and using a notebook efficiently. Here is a detailed guide from the Gentoo documentation. Has enough details right – from configuring the kernel to putting your laptop on sleep. The concepts apply, no matter what Linux distro you use.
My Two Cents 