[dsirkle]

I bought an upgraded aftermarket battery on ebay. While it works fine the LED's would alternately flash while the netbook was on. I read other online accounts of this phenomena and concluded that this was just something that I would have to put up with. Tonight I added a program and had to restart the computer. It stopped in mid reboot and gave the message that the computer does not recognize this battery and will not charge it, hit F1 to continue. well I hit F1and it rebooted and sure enough the battery wouldn't charge. The charger would run on AC but wasn't charging the battery. I tuned the computer off and then plugged the charger in to it. The white light came on to indicate that it was charging. I turned on the netbook, checked the battery status and it was indeed charging. Now it charges just fine without the LED's flashing just as a factory battery would. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

[Keyone]

This has been thoroughly discussed in the 77Wh battery thread (and possibly a few others as well). You can search for that thread. Basically all you have done is discovered for yourself what others have discovered and discussed about. That method is the only way to charge your aftermarket battery while turned on - granted once you unplug it, it will not charge again until power off.

[zach256]

It seems that you can get it to charge while powered on. Just remove the battery and reinsert.

[STiMULi]

Originally Posted by zach256

It seems that you can get it to charge while powered on. Just remove the battery and reinsert.

At least for me (bios A04) the above is not true. The only way to get it to recharge is to shut it down & restart it with the chrarger plugged in.

To me, it is just a caveat I have to get used to :geek:

[holmes4]

It seems to depend on the battery - perhaps the vendor. Mine will charge while powered on, but sometimes I have to do the remove and reinsert dance.

[bbkim]

Originally Posted by holmes4

It seems to depend on the battery - perhaps the vendor. Mine will charge while powered on, but sometimes I have to do the remove and reinsert dance.

Steve, can you tell me what kind of battery you have (i.e. aftermarket? capacity?)? Also, if it is aftermarket battery, where you got yours from?

[holmes4]

It's this one, purchased via amazon.com from "dbustore".

[SkyWriter]

...and don't forget to read the review, because this one is not substantively different from the rest. i bought one too - i'll probably only ever use it when flying.

4.0 out of 5 stars Lasts a long time, not 100% compatible, March 31, 2009
By S. Lionel (Nashua, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
There are a lot of vendors offering 8-cell batteries for the Dell Mini 9 - a lot of people ordered from eBay and waited weeks for a shipment from Asia. I bought this one via Amazon which arrived in a few days from the US northwest.

On the plus side, the battery does last maybe twice as long as the stock 4-cell battery, though I think that 10:45 is a rather extreme case. You should be able to get seven hours with normal use (maybe not playing video games or watching DVDs.)

There are a couple of minuses, though. The first, which would apply to most any extended battery built like this, is that it raises the back of the Mini an inch or more and, at the same time, limits the tilt of the screen even more than normal (which for the Mini is pretty severe.) This means that you'll want to elevate the whole netbook or perhaps at least the front edge to be able to see the screen with this battery in place. The battery does have rubber feet so it will be somewhat resistant to skidding.

Another more serious problem with all of these extended batteries is that the Mini 9 will often decide that it is an "unsupported battery". What happens then is that the two front edge LEDs flash alternately and charging stops. Some people report, using eBay batteries, that they can't charge the battery at all while the Mini is powered on and/or get an error message from the BIOS when booting.

With this battery, I don't see it that bad. I never had a boot problem and it does charge while in use. It will sometimes start the LED flashing but I can usually get it to stop by removing and reinserting the battery - at least for a while.

I also found that if I updated the Mini 9's BIOS from version A04 to A05 that things got worse - then I had more of the problems people have reported. I flashed back to A04 and it was better. Some people report that using the old A00 BIOS works better for them, but that gives up some features I would not want to lose.

On the whole, I do recommend this battery but be aware of the limitations.

[holmes4]

That's my review.

[SkyWriter]

Originally Posted by holmes4

That's my review.

if there is a consistent way to operate it - do you think can we get a 'how to operate this battery' sticky since people continue to purchase them? including me