This is exactly the question I was trying to ask. I wish that the buttons on the side controlled the Palm sounds, and all the "other" phone sounds (vm bips, etc.), and made the ringer silent if it wasn't, but didn't make the ringer make noise if it was silent before. I wish that whatever I set the ringer to in the Prefs is what it went back to when I turned silent mode off. I guess I feel like I went to the effort of setting it explicitly, the temporary silent mode shouldn't be changing that setting for me. Oh well. A shortcut, as you suggest, that sets it back to vibrate quickly would also make this no big deal.