Yes, very silly place for a power button if you ask me. It will get pressed accidentally by virtually everyone who picks it up and moves it, or uses it, or bumps it into the side of something.
You can configure the power button to do whatever you want it to do of course. I think the default behaviour in Ubuntu's Unity is to show the shutdown menu (shutdown, reboot, suspend, or hibernate), not simply suspend the laptop right there and then.
Plenty of laptops have a power button on the side now. Lenovo's Yoga series does this too.
Plenty of laptops have a power button on the side now. Lenovo's Yoga series does this too.