I too experienced short battery life (brand new Duracell (c) = 2 to 3 shots and then I get a low battery warning). It happened with rechargables as well. Turning the camera on again allowed me to take another picture or two before the low battery warning is displayed (I could repeat this procedure and take over 100 pictures with the same batteries). It appeared to be an issue with the battery charge reporting rather than the batteries.... Until I tried a different memory card! I had recently upgraded from a 1Gb Kingston SD card to a 2Gb SanDisk card ad that when the problem started. To prove this I tried again using the same batteries that had just been in the camera when it reported low battery, removed the SD card and used the built-in memory - no problem I was able to fill, delete (format) and fill again several times without the low battery warning! Hope this helps!
LV426, March 2008