First outings tend to use more battery life than once you get used to the camera, but that sure does sound way too low. Are you doing a lot of zooming, and playbacks? I had to set my playback review times down to 2 seconds when I got my G12, and that helped a little. But I did notice that I was also checking my menus a lot in the beginning, so now that I'm more familiar with them, I don't need to do that as much since I set shortcuts for the most used menu items.
Also keeping the LCD display on full brightness killed my battery life, so I lowered that to about 3/4 power. How about flash? Are you using that a lot or not much at all? Long exposure photography uses a lot of power too. Either way, DSLR's seem to have wonderful battery life because their batteries have higher mA-hour ratings than most compact cameras. Make sure the battery has the correct rating. The Battery Pack should be the NB-13L.
Unfortunately the specifications for this camera is only Approx. 210 shots, Approx. 310 shots with ECO Mode. So I would have to say short of getting a spare battery, you might want to talk to the retailer where you got this from about another solution.
Steve M.
