1) Yes, my battery was dead. I have put a in a replacement battery and now it is charging.
2) My problem with installing ver 4 was that after installation, and downloading updates at the same time (nothing else), is that I got a constant minus sign at the top left corner of the screen after installation. And, I could not operate the AA110 at all. Reinstalling the OS seemed to be the only solution.
I tried twice with the same result. Since the constant sign remained for almost an hour I gave up and reinstalled ver 3.
But, the question is, in what way is ver 4 better? Is it equally fast as ver 3? I havn't seen any reviews of version 4 for the AA110.
3) Yes, I think I have what must be last bios, BIOS v0.3310 10/06/2008.