Dell Respond To Netbook Battery Issue: Software To Blame

After user reports surfaced last week regarding the standard battery on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook being smaller than advertised, Dell have responded to claims that some power packs have only three, not four cells.  In a comment on our original post, Dell employee Jay Pinkert blames the third-party software being used to report on the batteries and suggests that Dell has confirmed that this is the case.

"The Inspiron Mini 9 is configured with, and has never shipped with anything but, 32WH batteries. A third-party test software program being used in the field doesn't properly program every vendor's battery to report power (versus current) capabilities, and so the utility is not properly reporting the actual battery capacity. We have confirmed this and all packs are 4-cell 32Whr, and will deliver more than 4 hours of battery life in typical usage." Jay Pinkert, Dell employee

Without an Inspiron Mini 9 netbook on hand, we can't test out Jay's claim.  However, it's certainly possible that the test software used was at fault, rather than the battery itself.  As far as we're aware, no user has actually opened up their netbook battery and physically counted the cells inside.

We'd be interested to hear what sort of battery life users are getting from the Inspiron Mini 9 netbooks.  Can you reach Dell's suggested "4 hours of battery life in typical usage"?  Let us know – together with the specs of your Mini 9, just for comparison's sake - in the comments.