Every time I boot (or reboot) the power setting mode advances to the next highest setting from where it was before. For example, if I had it on power saver mode before, next time I boot up it will change to high performance. Next time after that it will be super high performance. After that, it goes back to power saver. It does this whether I'm running from AC or battery power. Anyone else encounter this?

I get similar though I hadn't noticed the definite pattern you report. For me it seems to be more or less random choice between Power Saver and Super High Performance and only very rarely High Performance. I almost always switch back to High Performance mode on startup and it is beginning to become a bit of a bore

I don't get a lot of time to post replies (got kids, pets and work and all) but I had this problem and as a work around I edited the var/eeepc/cpu_mode and left the file blank. Its not really solved but stops the machine switching modes ever time I reboot or login. If one changed modes the problem would most likely come back but it stopped me from going nuts. Good luck.