Poor Battery Life

We tried both AA and Lithium batteries and found that the battery life was very disappointing and very inconsistant. Sometimes we would get only a dozen pictures before the battery died. With one (expensive) lithium battery we were about to shoot about 75 pictures before it also died. Clearly, from our experience and other posts there is an inconsistent problem with battery life. We contacted a Nikon support person who was totally disinterested and could not offer any clues. Otherwise the camera takes pretty good pictures and we like the small camera size.