I don't buy that, sure they might actually have to test their device for conformance with the requisite standards. OTOH most of the far-eastern brands manage to

I don't buy that, sure they might actually have to test their device for conformance with the requisite standards. OTOH most of the far-eastern brands manage to provide those options and they work. That is because the core parts are provided by intel/amd. How is it that msi/asus/supermicro/etc manage to afford all those options on devices that cost 1/2 of what the average HP device does? HP/etc can't even get windows working correctly on a device that ships with windows. That is fundamentally what the article is about (the OS pref requests not being honored properly). Its because HP/Dell/etc aren't really providing any real validation above the underlying ODM anymore. So whether the S3/whatever mode actually works is more a function of whether intel/amd and their bios provider insyde/ami/etc managed to get the option hooked up at all. So if you happen to enable S3 with some funny device and it doesn't come out of standby properly, then sure its a bug, you have to disable that device or disable S3. But what really happens with the HP/etc laptops is you don't have the choice. Which is why you see endless complaints about modern standby issues on their "windows" devices despite running the supported OS. If the end user could just go and ignore the MS recommendations and disable modern standby on a laptop class device they likely would be much happier. Having the machine work reliably vs download email when the lid is closed is an easy choice. In summary, the "value add" the big OEM's are adding is product segmentation by removing options the underlying technology providers ship by default.