The Dell Mini 9 is a great little laptop, now sadly discontinued. But mine is still going strong, despite being repeatedly dropped, new memory, one dead SSD (7 days before the warranty expired, Ha Ha!), a big crack in the base and a bit of surgery to resolder a broken power connector. [see here for a great set of teardown pictures and a full disassembly guide.)

However, the one after-market modification that has caused me the biggest nightmare is what should have been the easiest: replacing the battery. Having purchased a 4400Mah extended battery to replace the standard W953G unit, as soon as it was plugged in, I got the dreaded alternate flashing lights on the front and the message:

WARNING: The battery cannot be identified.

The system will be unable to charge this battery.

Strike the F1 key to continue

Great.

The solution was not – as I originally hoped – to return the battery and get a new one, but in fact to downgrade my BIOS to A00. There’s a great community-created tool for creating a bootable USB key that contains everything you need to flash your Mini 9 to any BIOS level between A00 and A06. You can get it via BitTorrent, or dowload it directly from here: flashbiosv1.52.exe

Also - thanks to Birgit and the guys at www.laptopsandspares.com, who i would recommend for chargers, batteries and other accessories.

Day One with the Remstar Auto M-Series CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) system (and a Philips Respironics mask). Hopefully I'll finally get a good night's sleep, or at least stop snoring.

I just need one for the cat now, and we're sorted.

[UPDATE] One can always rely on family to be supportive. Thanks, Dad.