I think the real problem is the battery was itself sealed with an airtight plastic wrapping. If consumers could just pull out the lithium plates, patch new electrolytic material over wherever they were shorting, then zip the battery back up, then they'd be fine.<p>And another thing! Back in my day, if you had a transistor go bad in a discrete logic unit, you could just pop out the card and solder on a new one. But kids these days with their fancy integrated circuits...