I too signed up to in order to thank Master Kirby and all that replied with helpful information.

I would also like to mention(and I'm sure you might be amused by)
I am 17 and I managed to get a Gameboy Colour emulator working on my phone which i used only for Pokemon because I was keen to revisit those great memories of being a pokemaster . My friend started to play Pokemon on the emulator with me and after a couple of weeks we decided to buy gameboys and play Pokemon for real. I managed to get a purple transparent one for $17AUD along with Pokemon Pinball, 4 game cases and a hardcase. The other one(which my friend will be using once it has arrived) was $28AUD with F1 Race & Killer Instinct. Both with including postage. My friend still had his Pokemon games sitting around so we decided to use his. I started playing silver lastnight and got up to the part where you battle your rival for the first time and decided to make sure that it would save(prior to reading this post)...It didn't give me the option to load when I restarted so today I googled around and found this thread.

So I told my friend about the game not saving and that I found a guide that explains how to replace the battery that is used to keep the save file alive. We both agreed that I would buy 3 of the CR2032's off ebay(which I did today for $10AUD, free postage) and replace the battery in Silver and any other Pokemon games that cant hold a save.

I look forward to attempting this soon....I might first try just squeezing the battery in between the contacts and if I'm not confident it will hold, I'll solder the battery in place.

Also...can anyone tell me whether its more fun to play the special edition Pikachu version or a regular Gold or Silver version?. I read on Wikipedia that you can only choose Pikachu as a starter and that it follows you around all the time, not to mention that you "cant get certain Pokemon unless Pikachu has a certain happiness level".