LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Linux mint, some tweaking (hdparm, GRUB2 and so on)

I installed Linux Mint (Debian edition, Xfce desktop, 3.0.0-1 kernel, 64bit) to my laptop (Thinkpad T410) some time ago and noticed some problems...

First, the HDD seems to enter standby mode (spin down?) frequently (checked with hdparm -C) and this causes some delay when trying to open programs, for example. What would be the easiest way to disable the standby mode or at least set it to something like 30 minutes? I checked the advanced power management status with hdparm -B and it's 96. Setting it to 254 should be fine, and it can also be executed on startup via hdparm.conf, but then there's another command switch (hdparm -S) which also affects the spin down timeout. Which one should I use? And is that setting stored in operating system memory or in HDD's internal memory? I haven't noticed such problems on Windows so I'd not like to change any parameters that could affect both OSes.

Then I'd like to change the names of the operating systems shown in GRUB boot menu which would be easy with the old Grub but of course this distro uses the damned Grub2 and it seems that its configuration files are horrible bloat. Changing the timeout was easy via /etc/default/grub but changing the OS names isn't that simple... Changes to /boot/grub/grub.cfg are sometimes overridden and the files in /etc/grub.d/ seem to contain nothing name-related.

Third problem is the Xfce terminal which is often laggy. Sometimes running commands can take over 5 seconds even if the command is really simple, such as logging in as root via SU. I haven't noticed such delays with my old desktop computer (Mandriva + KDE + Konsole) This might, however, be related to the HDD standby mode but I'm not sure... I think it happens even if the HDD is not in standby, and I've heard complaints of the slow performance from other users as well.

Maybe these annoyances happen because I'm running Mint on laptop but the "Mint just works" statement isn't as true as they say...