Surely this is something that the iPhone Configuration Utility takes care of. Here are the settings on my iPhone.
automatic brightness off
vibrate off for both ring and silent
with the 3G and 3GS I would still miss calls, so why bother?
new text message sound: Chime
keyboard clicks/typing sound off (ANNOYING!)
no sound alerts for anything other than ringing and text message
notifications:
only ever Alerts, never Sounds or Badges
auto-lock: never