I had a long talk with AppleCare about this. If you remove the DisplayLink driver, you're back to a working configuration with regard to the clamshell mode. They'll put the onus on DisplayLink. I'm guessing it's something that came out in 10.7.2 timeframe that the DisplayLink folks are tripping on. Not sure if it's an Apple fix or DisplayLink. I'm bummed that it's not fixed in 1.8 beta. :( :(

Any update on the problem?
 

Hi Christian and Carlo,

Any update on getting a fix for this problem?

Thanks,
mike

This problem is driving me crazy. I'm also on 10.7.3 on an i7 MBA, and several times per day I am forced to reboot my computer.

What you're experiencing is the same thing discussed here, and in earlier threads ad nauseum: http://displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1546

It drives me crazy too, and has been more or less since I got this MBA six(?) months ago. DisplayLink has acknowledged the issue in a roundabout way, but that's as much as we've heard.

I remain hopeful that this will be fixed by DisplayLink soon, but who knows? It's been quite a while.

Mountain Lion fixed this for me
 

I just wanted to close out this thread with a posting that Mountain Lion fixed this. I uninstalled the 1.8 beta driver and re-installed the 1.8 (July 2nd) driver after updating to Mountain Lion. My 2011 MBA now works great. No crashes, very stable, no broken clamshell mode.