From when I bought it up until yesterday, my laptop would dim the screen automatically if you let it sit for long enough, and then if you hit a key or moved the mouse, the brightness would jump back to what you had it at. I enjoy that behavior. It works well.

Then I booted it up today, and found that now it will dim the screen automatically if you let it sit for long enough, but it doesn't restore the screen brightness. I have to do that manually, every single time, and it's getting really old really fast.

It's an Alienware M17 running Windows 7 64-bit, in case that helps.