Comment 2 for bug 681488

I think "basic obvious functionality" is meant to be provided by pm-utils, indicator-applet and so on without having laptop-mode-tools installed. laptop-mode-tools is in universe and not part of a default installation. Maintaining compatibility with laptop-mode-tools has therefore low or no priority in the development of the standard components, which probably makes it very difficult for the laptop-mode-tools developers to make it play together with those. The package install conflict between pm-utils and laptop-mode-tools is an indication that you are on your own if you install laptop-mode-tools, since clearly the whole Ubuntu desktop relies on pm-utils being installed. laptop-mode-tools is not designed as a replacement of pm-utils.

I would encourage you to file bugs on pm-utils etc if they do not provide the functionality that one should expect of a modern operating system.