I recently installed KDE 4.1.3 from /testing on my laptop and wanted to get suspend to disk working with Guidance Power Manager.
I had already had this working with pm-utils and was able to run pm-hibernate as a normal user using sudo.
I found that I can get hibernate to work by editing /usr/share/apps/guidance-power-manager/powermanage.py and changing:
I then renamed the /usr/share/apps/guidance-power-manager/powermanage.pyc file and logged out. After logging in as root so that the powermanage.pyc file was recreated, then logging out and logging in as my normal user I can now hibernate from the Guidance Power Manager.

This is OK for my needs, but I am wondering whether there is an alternative scheme that I should be using rather than disabling HAL?

Hrm, all of that shouldn't have been necessary :/
Does suspend/hibernate work correctly from the "Leave" menu?

If the HAL methods aren't working, make sure your user account is a member of the "power" group. If it is already, then I have another (far-fetched) idea, but let's start with the simple stuff...

Doh! I would have sworn that I had set up the "power" group, but no, I hadn't. So of course I reversed my changes and hibernate works out of the box. Why does it take a second pair of eyes to see the blindingly obvious sometimes? (That was rhetorical).
I do not see any suspend/hibernate options in the "Leave" menu though.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to answer Robby. Please feel free to loudly guffaw at this rueful drongo!

Okay, then I won't answer ;-)
Seriously, it's not just you - it happens to all of us from time to time: trust me

Hrm, ignore that - it's only in a newer kde4, I think ;-)