Dell Inspiron Mini 9 hits end of life

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Dell Inspiron Mini 9 hits end of life

freitasm

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#35154 4-Jun-2009 15:41

The Dell Mini 9 is now retired from the product list according to the official Direct2Dell blog.

timbosan

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#221694 4-Jun-2009 16:35

Does the product list in question apply worldwide or just the US? I just checked and Vodafone are still advertising the Dell mini 9 as "NEW!", and it's only been available from them for what, a month or two?

Probably shipping off all the old stock from the USA to NZ ;-)

scottjpalmer

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#221698 4-Jun-2009 16:39

timbosan: Does the product list in question apply worldwide or just the US? I just checked and Vodafone are still advertising the Dell mini 9 as "NEW!", and it's only been available from them for what, a month or two?

Probably shipping off all the old stock from the USA to NZ ;-)

One would assume there will be stock floating around in the distribution channel.

Vodafone has been trialling other integrated 3G equipped netbooks, something will be along shortly no doubt.

hammertime

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#226492 18-Jun-2009 23:09

timbosan:

Probably shipping off all the old stock from the USA to NZ ;-)

Sigh. Maybe Dell has to give them away now on Vodafone because of the widespread battery problems they have.

How do I know this? Because I got an XP one yesterday on the the 3gig 24month data plan, and the battery had what is evidently a known problem. It simply won't charge out of the box.

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-9-hardware-issues-problems/420-battery-not-charging.html

It wouldn't come out of it's "pre-charge" state, where you charge it for 12 hours. (I ultimately left it for 18 hours).

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/02/13/initial-battery-charge-for-the-mini-9.aspx

The whole thing smells a bit fishy, as did the Dell CSRs advice to "take it back to the retailer and try another battery in it." This is after running through the BIOS and battery diagnostic routine. Now he said that I have to check with another battery in case the "module" or something was dead. So then I wonder if they're aware of not just a battery problem, but a hardware problem on top of that. (And the retailer has some spare Dell brand batteries hanging around for just this occasion, right? Yeah sure).

Why did he not offer a replacement battery if this is a known issue? There is advice out there to flash to a newer BIOS firmware for battery issue fixes, but you need the battery at 10% to do that. A catch-22. (The unit was on the current firmware by the way). The whole thing smacks of a being a bit of a fiasco.

The retailer was actually pretty good about it and just swapped the whole device for a shrink-wrapped replacement.

So fingers crossed - hopefully the new unit will work correctly out of the box. It had been charging for 4 hours now, but XP is showing 0% charge, battery status IDLE and the front light is still flashing orange - no change so far from what happened with the first one...

hammertime

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#226560 19-Jun-2009 09:06

Update: Battery on 2nd device shows 0% charge, status idle, "functioning normally" after the requisite charge time.

So that's two for two.

Has anyone on Geekzone bought one, and what was your experience?

hammertime

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#226711 19-Jun-2009 15:01

Yay. The third unit has a working battery.

Aaroona

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#226752 19-Jun-2009 16:26

hammertime: Yay. The third unit has a working battery.

LOL.

I know what you mean - I'm onto my third new laptop (soon to be fourth) because the computers Dell are supplying a less than workable.

1x Inspiron 1720
2x Studio 17
and the next one is going to be a StudioXPS