The maturity time is only 24 hours, so not having coin control isn't as bad as it is with coins that you have to hold for months before staking
I had the impression that there were a few issues with the client (Qt Wallet on Windows) as I needed to close and restart the wallet several times to get it to sync up (I had not run my wallet a few days after trying to find one of the PoW blocks, which I failed in. So, I bought some coins yesterday and tonight they will stake - I will have to run my laptop continuously so I am looking forward to compiling the wallet for RasPi and running it stand-alone from a cell phone charger.
You can just turn your laptop back on when it's about to stake.