After the hiccups of a few days ago where suspend/resume didn't work for a day or so, my laptop seems to have settled into a happy place.  Suspend/resume is now working, and I haven't had any hard-hangs where the machine becomes unresponsive (which was why I upgraded to the backported KDE 4.7.1).  Which is to say; my machine is finally pretty-much working.  I still get occasional 20-30s soft-hangs where the machine becomes unresponsive, but they are clearing and I get back to a working desktop, so an annoyance rather than a deal-killer.

At which point Kubuntu makes a new release :) .