Intrepid: Standby mode knocks the whole system down (MacBook Pro rev. 3), possible document loss

Testing Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha with all updates (64-Bit) on a MacBook Pro rev. 3.

When battery power was low, Ubuntu automatically put the system into standby. No low battery warnings, no questions (eg "Would you like to save your document?") nor any info.

You could see that the mode following was standby because MacBook Pros have a front lamp which blinks with kind of a heartbeat rhythm when the system is in standby mode.

Attached power to the computer and pressed "Esc": nothing. Pressed "on" button: sound of hard disk acitivity, but the screen remaind black. You had to hard reset the whole machine.