Should warn users with non-PAE systems that Ubuntu has dropped support for their computers

I upgraded my Thinkpad T40 system from Precise to Quantal yesterday. It's quite a long-running Ubuntu install so I got various prompts from dpkg about replacing config files etc., and one curious error that linux-image-3.5.0-generic failed to install. After upgrading, 'apt-get' was broken, suggesting I ran 'apt-get install -f' which proceeded to fail to install linux-image-3.50-generic again. I noticed an error message hidden amongst apt's output to the effect that the kernel cannot be installed on my non-PAE hardware.

I would not have run the dist-upgrade in the first place, had I known that in the long-term Quantal and future releases will not work on my computer in any case (it still has the 3.2.0 kernel for now, but I don't think that using an unsupported kernel is viable in the long term). It would be great if update-manager could warn when it detects non-PAE hardware to avoid others wasting an evening as I just have.

The only hint of dropping support in the release notes is the following line:

    Transitioning of the i386 generic-pae flavor to become the generic flavor offering

I had no idea what PAE was until today, so this isn't enough in itself.

Release: Precise Pangolin
Hardware: IBM Thinkpad T40