Ted Edwards wrote in message ...
Len S wrote:

.......Sounds like you may have tried very early cells.
You may be right, but I've been reluctant to give them a chance for
the last few years.


gotten years on my Li-Ion Notebook and camera without battery

Well, mine died in two years. This is about average life from what I
have read although a few have done better.
I would agree again. It's just that my NiMH results have never been
that good.

Li-ion suffers from the same thing such as the statements below

From 1st hand experience:
1) NiMH does have memory effect (they may not call it that, but what
else can you call it when you are told to deep cycle a battery to
"fix" it?
There are several effects in batteries that are eroneously called memory
effect. Li-ion suffers from some of these too.
OK, maybe I got on a roll here. But I have never had to "condition"
LiIon cells.


2) NiMH self discharge is far worse than Li-Ion.
This is true but

something that has been charged withing a few weeks and finding it
dead. If you have NiMH cells, get used to this.

Either you are storing your units in a *very* warm place or your
appliance has an ureasonably high standby current.
Could be (never measured)

4) NiMh performance may, on paper, be close to Li-ion, but in "real
world" electronic products, my experience is that NiMH is far behind.

As you can see, I'm questioning your "real world" experience. My
*measurements* corrolate well with Dave Etchell's in
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/BATTS/BATTS.HTM and the data in
http://www.dp-now.com/index.html
I must defer to the tests. But I don't like the idea of swapping sets
of cells for something like a digital camera. You pop out the
discharged set for charging. Then pop in a set that was charged a
while back. Now you don't know how full these cells are because they
have been self discharging after their charger terminated a long time
ago. I prefer embedded chargers.

Do not believe that you will get more charge-discharge cycles from
NiMH. Maybe in a contractor's cordless drill that normally gets run to
empty every time, But not in a camera, phone, or PDA, where it's very
normal to partially drain the battery, NiMH hates this, but Li-Ion is
very happy with this kind of use.

Sorry, but this is patently false for NiMH being charged with a smart
charger.
I disagree. This is the 2nd most significant difference between the 2
cell chemistries. Low self discharge being #1

5) Notice that no decent notebook computer or cell phone uses NiMH any
more.
These products also have a high status factor. The average business
persons notebok gets replaced because it is "out of date" not because it
doesn't do the job it was purchased for. Li-ion is a status item.
I again don't agree. Li-Ion would not be a status symbol if there were
no benefit. Do you think the average user had any idea what NiMH or
Li-Ion was before all this stuff started? Of course not. If (the
cheaper) NiMH cells worked adequately, cell phones and Notebook would
be using them and hyping NiMH instead. The price competition on these
products is ruthless. They look for ways to cut $0.05 from cost.

Now the one key point that actually makes us both mostly correct is
that you are talking about outboard chargers and I am talking about
embedded chargers. You most like are running your cells through full
cycles so your batteries are happy. I used my old cell phone a little
bit every day and then plugged it in at night. The battery died (had
about 5 minutes capacity) in 2-3 months. Now a days you have zero
chance of getting a good NiMh charger built into something because a
*good* NiMH charger actually costs more than a good Li-Ion one and
almost offsets the battery cost.