@mcc Heh. A friend of mine and I, Mac users both, have been kicking around the idea of FreeBSD on the laptop and that idea of sleep on lid close, wake on lid open is #1 on both our lists and it doesn't work any worse or better; having to force power it off is exactly where I got to. Choice of hardware seems to matter. So does tailoring software for your hardware.
I have done FreeBSD on the desktop, several times before and after Mac OS X. Sometimes text modes only.