I have a real annoying problem with my Inspiron 8500.  When this lid is closed, the display turns off and appears to resize (smaller) at the same time, forcing all of my desktop shortcuts into the upper left hand corner of the screen.  Applications such as Outlook then open their windows in the upper left hand corner of the screen.  I have set the lid switch to "do nothing" in my power settings, but this doesn't seem to make a difference.   I posted before with no replies on how I might be able to fix this.  I'd imagine this has got to be a common problem among 8500 users.