OK, seriously, did anyone think that their Asus Eee PC warranty would cover damaged by third party peripherals? Last month, high capacity batteries for the Eee PC started showing up on eBay. These 10400mAh batteries have twice the capacity of a standard Eee PC battery, meaning your laptop should run twice as long on battery power. And the batteries are reasonably priced at $60 to $100 — while Asus plans to charge $99 for its 6-cell 7800mAh battery whenever the company actually gets around to releasing it.

But there’s been at least one unconfirmed report of a 10400mAh battery exploding while charging and causing damage to an Eee PC. And that’s led to an unconfirmed report that Asus refused to repair the computer. But you know what? I really wouldn’t blame them. And in fact, DigiTimes reports that the company says if this did happen, the damage would not be covered by the warranty.

So a word of caution. If you’re going to buy a third party battery, you might want to keep an eye on your Eee PC while it’s charging, unplug it if it’s getting unreasonably hot, and oh yeah, wait until you’ve read a few thousand reports from happy customers before picking one up. Or you could just wait for Asus to release their overpriced 6 cell battery.