Is this a cmos/bios/board thing ?

I have an HP laptop that doesn't wake from sleep when devices are plugged in/out of the ports, but I have a Gateway that does. It's really sorta stupid that it does. This means when I unplug the mouse moving it from one comp to the other, I always have to put the Gateway back to sleep (unless I want to just let it drift off after a while using its battery up), but the HP doesn't require this useless babysitting.

Is this something that can be changed somewhere, or is it just a fluke specific to some computers?