>> There is the serial terminal with lots of scrollback approach, or
>> use a printer, or a tip/cu line from another machine.
>
> How does any of this help me reading the message the APM subsystem is
> printing on my laptop during the last stage of my reboots?

Hard to say without knowing anything about your laptop.  Can it have
a serial console?

What about wrapping the delay inside #ifdef DEBUG ?

Putting delays in to debug a problem is fine.  It is putting delays
into a production kernel that we are objecting to.

-Dave