A final update seemed in order. LX was excellent in dealing with this
proble. They replaced the unit free of charge and had it FedExed to me
while I returned the original unit to the dealer. Great customer
relations!

I suspect the problem was a fault that drained the battery in about a
year's time instead of the normal 7-10 years. They say they check the
units for battery drain, but an intermittent problem would likely pass
that test. They also told me that the failure rate on batteries is very
low, less than 1 in a 1,000 per year, which further supports the faulty
unit hypothesis. Without getting into statistical jargon like
"likelihood ratios", it's pretty clear that two failures in two years
with that kind of failure rate have to be caused by something other
than just random battery failures.

The bottom line: All the good things I've said here about the Colibri
in other threads now have one more plus, great customer relations.

Martin