Well no fix yet. I've tried pretty much every combination on these machines to no avail. A few notes.

The dell ACPI doesn't look like it's supported under linux. I don't think, however, that the kernel is using ACPI for power management.

Even when I use noapm on the boo tline, the apm module is still showing up in 'lsmod' . Trying to rmmod on apm give a device busy errror.

I do seem to be able to avoid unpluggin the power cord if I use reboot from the root prompt and go into another load (debian or windows) nd let one of them shut down the computer.

Sorry, no fix so far ....