Force charge works a treat m8. As Toad says and thanks to him for the tip.
I picked up a mpx200 on ebay uk sim locked to orange. The first thing I done of course was to flash upgrade the phone to win mobile 2003 to unlock it and get rid of all the orange stuff on it. But to my dismay the charge the battery held was awfull (probably because I didnt make sure the phone was fully charged before I done the upgrade). So I tried the force charge thing that Toad suggested and also done a full reset (switch phone on while pressing the blue button) And volia! its now 30 hours since I done it and the battery i still at 90% charge! . Not a bad improvement from 4 hours max!

One word of warning. A full reset will clear all your personal settings to default. Things like your calendar entries, phone owner info, Internet settings will go back to default.

THe only thing I am now having problems with is getting the o2 GPRS internet working anyone ?