Installing Nvidia drivers on W530 with Ubuntu 12.04

I'm not sure if it's the particular laptop model (Lenovo W530) or the particular Ubuntu version (12.04 LTS) or perhaps the fact I'm a complete and utter Linux newbie, but getting this show on the road has been quite a bumpy ride, to say the least (just shoot me would probably describe it more accurately, all I wanted was to set up a dual monitor environment).

1. Remove existing Nvidia drivers: "sudo apt-get purge nvidia*".
2. If you have a Nouveau xserver installed, you will probably need to remove it, or at least disable it in order to prevent conflicts with the nvidia drivers. I purged the hell out of it: "sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau". 
3. Install the latest nvidia drivers: "sudo apt-get install nvidia-experimental-310".
4. vi /etc/default/grub and add the "nox2apic" flag to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX option.
5. Update the grub: "sudo update-grub".
6. Reboot.
7. Enter the bios and change the display configuration to "Discrete".

Worth noting:

• I'm not sure that the brutal "apt-get purge nvidia*" command is really necessary, but since it was a long journey, at some stage I wanted to make sure I was not being trolled by some driver/version conflicts and removed it all.
• "nvidia-experimental-310" states that it's "...an unstable beta driver... intended for testers and early adopters, but since I've come to realize every Linux user is in fact a tester (knowingly or not), I've come to terms with using it. Should any problems arise, I'll make sure to upadte this post.
• I had not been able to boot until I added the "nox2apic" thingy to the grub loader. It might be related to the bios virtualization I have enabled, along with the discrete display mode. I've seen some complaints about these two messing up boots left and right when combined.
• Drivers prior to "nvidia-experimental-310" (even nvidia-current, which is equivalent to nvidia-experimental-304 as far as I could make out) did not seem to cut it,  I kept getting this error when trying to interact with nvidia drivers.

Btw, in Windows this whole thing would have been sorted out by pressing "Fn"+"F-something". Just saying.

Edit: 
Due to a recent system upgrade I've had the dubious pleasure of testing the whole routine under Ubuntu 13.10 with Cinnamon 2.0.14 and nvidia-319. Still works!

Also, if you're running a dual monitor setting and wish to set a primary monitor but run into the infamous "nvidia settings are lost upon logout" issue, add the following line to your xorg.conf (which you might need to generate first,  by bringing up "nvidia-settings"  and clicking the "Save to X configuration file" button).

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-3"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-3"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP-3: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Make sure to use the correct monitor id, which you can pick up from the neighboring "metamodes" option. In my case it was "DFP-3".

Unlike the previous one, it "only" took like half a day to figure this out. Someone there in NVIDIA must be getting sloppy.

I'm still looking for a more elegant and generic solution to the infamous "nvidia settings are lost upon logout" issue, if you happen to have that one figured out, you're more than welcome to share your secret!