I started mcedit from xterminal, changed powerkey doublepress to softpoweroff, hit save, confirmed save and my entire tablet froze up, requiring a powercycle.

I'm really annoyed when I have to reboot a Linux computer; it usually means something's fecked up real good.

I "more-d" /etc/mce/mce.ini and found it to appear in perfectly normal condition, the kind of condition I tend to find it in before I used to start tampering with it -- which I repeat not having done in this installation.

See here, I'm going to be honest; right now it's starting to look very tempting to just install Midnight Commander and just do the changes manually.