I had a HP 517 digital camera that would not take more than 3 or 4 pictures before the "battery dead" message appeared and it shut down.

Sometimes turning it off then on again would "revive" it. Using regular alkaline AA batteries would't work - they caused the camera to shut down when I tried to take the very first picture. I called HP and after holding for quite a while each time, I had to talk to 9 different people in 3 sessions, most who's command of English was marginal. I had to fax in proof of purchase, because they automatically (the voice response system too) said it was out of warranty, without even getting any information from me! I had to explain the situation and listen to stupid ideas like "take the memory card out", then finally perform a firmware upgrade while on the phone with the tech. Each session took at least 3 people to get to the next step in the process. When the Firmware upgrade didn't do the trick, they finally relented and said they would send a new camera, if I was willing to give them a credit card number. The camera came a week later (by Fed-ex) The new one seems to work fine, with the same batteries that failed to power the old ones. However, I spent about 2-3 hours on the phone with those 9 people - attempting to convince them that my problem was real. That's simply not acceptable!