Comment 46 for bug 489830

Me to, in Xubuntu 11.10 Oneiric the settings of gpointing-device-settings will be forgotten with restart (or standby).

A little workaround, which works fine here, is to add the configuration to "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf".
Inside 'Section "InputClass"', you can make vital configurations like activate "PalmDetect" or "SHMConfig". They'll after restart (or standby).

It seems, that the file can vary in "20-thinkpad.conf" (post above) or "50-synaptics.conf" (most hardware), depends on your hardware.