Alienware M17X R3 hardware question - Intergrated Graphics and SSD compatibility.

Howdy,

     First time posting here, thought I would for a second opinion. Just got off the phone to the tech support guys and a few things didn't sit well so I thought I would ask the greater community for some clarification. Firstly, I have a 2720QM in my laptop that, to my understanding, had HD 3000 graphics. When I first got my laptop I tried to switch over while I was unplugged (because the 580M requires a small power station to keep going) and got a message about not having anything to switch over to. I then thought maybe there was a driver related issue but the drivers did not install as it also said I didn't meet requirements. Puzzled I checked device manager (nothing) and finally the BIOS (Not Detected). When I asked the tech support guy about this he looked over the build list and said "I don't see anything about HD3000, I guess you don't have it." but it says clearly on the intel website that it has. Is this something wrong or do certain hardware configs not implement the 'on board' graphics?

Secondly, I was wondering if there was a compatibility list for Solid State Drives in regards to the M17X R3. I recently acquired a shiny new Intel 520 120G drive and wanted to install it into my laptop. I know it is SATA 6 but was told it would be backwards compatible like its SATA 3 & 2 predecessors? It has just been giving me when I try to use it as an OS drive (lots of BSOD's and whenever I use it in bay 0 I encountered 'speed' issues). When I asked about this, knowing I can't get proper hardware support for something that didn't come from Dell, he said something along the lines of "SSD's use more power than normal hard drives and we take that into account when building our laptops, yours didn't come with an SSD so it sounds like a power issue.". Odd, really odd. So basically, can anyone shed some light or experience on this? Would be greatly appreciated.