Also... I haven't figured out if the machine can suspend. I see the VL Quit menu doesn't offer it. Can VL do suspend? Or is it a BIOS function I can enable/trigger somehow?
Try this is a terminal, as root:
hibernate
or, alternatively to suspend, rather than hibernate:
hibernate -F /etc/hibernate/ram.conf
Note that you have to have to tell LILO to use your swap partition to hibernate, if you haven't already... In /etc/lilo.conf, put the "resume=/dev/sda2" in the append line for your Vector boot option. (substituting the device for whatever your swap partition is).
If it works, you can assign those commands to keys, or something like that, to make things easier... for instance, I have the suspend command going when I close the laptop lid.