Batteries

We celebated our 3 year old's birthday last weekend - plenty of Hello Kitty, pink cotton candy, and strawberry milk.

And plenty of batteries. Is there any more viable form of currency for the Digital Dad?

I take two tactics when it comes to batteries. I buy a big block of "Kirkland" AAs at Costco as a backup. But my primarty stock is rechargeables.

Rechargeables are pretty varied. The older type are NiCad. These batteries have a "memory effect" where they remember where they discharged to previously and tend to run dry at that point forever. With NiCads you want to discharge them all the way down before you re-charge. Hassle.

Li-Ion are used in notebooks and other electronic portables but I have not seen them in AA or other standard formats yet.

NiMH are the recharge technology of choice. Virtually every major brand has rechargeables that use this technology. All of the re-chargers have been interopeable in my experience.

The main thing i look for is the mAH rating - that is, how many milliamps can be squeezed into the battery? Turns out there is a wide range. i have seen 1000 mAH all the way up to the Duracells i just bought that run 2050 mAH - that's effectively double the capacity.

Given you can re-charege them 1000 times it's hard to reason why you'd buy an Akaline again.

Comments

[Adam]

Key question: are rechargers for the same battery type--but from different brands--interchangeable? Can I put (for example) Radio Shack NiMH batteries into a Duracell NiMH charger?

[Ed]

Great subject for all us batt.-users.
I guess that the interchangeable use of batteries in different types of gadgets is a big subject (cameras, radios, players, etc.). Has to do with voltages and voltage-decay behavior. For example, NiMh batteries are rated at 1.2Volts and alkaline are 1.5Volts.

Then there are the "ultra-fast chargers" (tough on the batts. ?) versus the "slow chargers";

BTW, I have NiMh AAA-size as low as 750mAh and AA at 2250mAh

[Digital Dad]

My experience is that you can put any standard (AA, AAA, 9v, etc.) into any recharger.

Other than these recent Duracells I've bought "generic" NiMH AAs and they work fine in my Energizer recharger.

As Ed mentioned I'm a little wary of these fast chargers. Perhaps they do cause a shorter useful life (which is great for those who sell batteries!)