R51 Battery won't recharge on 101st cycle. Coincidence??

[Grumpy]

Have an R51 that is about 16 mos. old. All was working well and getting about 1 to 1-1/2 hours on a full charge (high system performance). At about 20% left, I closed lid for Hibernate, plugged in charger. Several hours later later still amber battery light. Opened lid, battery says still 20% and charging, but it's not. Battery has gradually lost charge over next few days. MaxMiser says 0 charge current and 101 recharge cycles.

Is there something magic at 100 recharges? Planned Obselescense? If the battery wouldn't fully charge or if capacity was down to 1/2 hour of battery time it wouldn't bother me, but seems like battery still had lots of useful life if I could just get it to charge like it says it is.

If I gotta buy a new battery, any suggestions for mfg's that provide one with a better lifespan? (Yes I have read the battery life articles and tips)

[Puppy]

There is a bug in older BIOSes which causes "battery sometimes does not charge". I noticed it few times but still don't have courage to update the BIOS (I have very bad experienced doing that on desktop machines - dead mainboard, weird errors etc..) What usually helps is to shutdown operating system, unplug AC adapter, wait a minute, plug the adapter.