Well, while phone side of Dell's tech support has served me well compared to what I would usually expect from any company, I'm a little disappointed with their repair center. I just got my mini 9 back (aka: the good news) after a week without it, and it has the same problem it left with (aka: the bad news). Talking to phone support, the log he had of the repairs they did consisted of.... replacing the hard drive and a clean install of the factory Ubuntu OS, which matches the"Other" and "OS Restore" boxes checked off on the "Corrective Repair Action" section of the form letter that was included in the box with my laptop (the explanation line for "Other" is blank). The logical source of the problem, the motherboard, was left untouched. Under the phone tech's recommendation, I updated to A05 (which from everything I can find hasn't been "officially" released externally by Dell yet) and am still seeing the issue. It would seem blatantly apparent to me that the motherboard should have been replaced the first time I sent it in, but because that didn't happen (I have to assume the techs at the repair site failed to even read the problem description, because other than that, only sheer stupidity could lead a technician to replace a hard drive when given the problem that has been described to them, and from them back to me to verify it, multiple times) ... I get to wait 1-2 days to receive a new power adapter and a new battery (despite both working perfectly outside of the motherboard-controlled switching between them). After that, I suspect, I'll be seeing another week or so without my laptop while it goes in ... again.
I apologize for rambling... I will reiterate that their phone techs have done a great job, at least. While in my last post I stated that I'd still recommend the Mini 9, I can't say quite as much for their repair services as things stand. If it wasn't a laptop, I'd be asking them to just send me a motherboard and I'd send them back the one I replace with it.