"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:57:11 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
wrote:

Gunner Asch wrote:
On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:53:24 -0400, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:

On 4 Aug 2001 01:26:44 GMT, in misc.survivalism
mailto (Speaker to Animals) wrote:

I lurk in a wider group of NGs then I ever post in.
sci.geo.satellite-nav is a GPS (there are other satellite nav systems
but
GPS
is the most common) NG. LG hangs out there.
A guy wrote an interesting article on batteries.
A lot of us use batteries for many usefull activities.
It agrees (mostly) with my own studies and experience.

Matching the Battery to the Task

By DAVID POGUE

IF the F.B.I. ever singled me out for surveillance, its final
report wouldn't hold much interest. "Wife, two kids, dog.
Watches `Survivor.' Aversion to mayo." Only one line at the end
of the document might seem a little peculiar. "Buys AA batteries
by the gross."

These days, most gizmos digital cameras, palmtops, music players
seem to have been designed in a conspiracy with Duracell: they
guzzle batteries like Gatorade at the marathon finish line. And
it's not just me. According to an Industrial Market Research
survey, the average American has about 25 battery-operated
gadgets in the house, up from only 7 in 1987.

The battery makers, of course, are delighted. All around us, we
see ads for new kinds of batteries that "offer unsurpassed power
for today's demanding devices," "last longer on high-tech
devices" and have "longer service life." In the name of science,
I decided to perform a few simple tests: I'd pop sets of each
heavily hyped battery into, say, a Palm organizer and see how
long they took to run down. What could be more scientific?

As it turns out, almost anything. When I shared my plans with
representatives of the Big Three Duracell, Eveready and Rayovac
they told me, with the weary sighs of people who explain this
point to journalists every day, that battery run-down tests are
terribly misleading. For starters, a battery designed to excel
in such a test would do poorly in the real world, where people
play, pause and put aside their electronics for days or weeks.
Who on earth actually runs a gadget continuously until it's out
of power? (Game Boy owners, you can put your hands down.)
Furthermore, the battery makers say, there is much greater
inconsistency in the power consumption of supposedly identical
devices than between two different batteries.

"We'd be delighted to help you design valid tests," one battery
company representative said. "And we'll look forward to reading
the results around Christmas."

When people conduct proper battery tests the repetitive,
expensive, computer-controlled sort prescribed by the American
National Standards Institute they find little variation across
brands. One such test, published by Consumer Reports in March,
offered a straightforward conclusion: When you need standard
alkalines, ignore the marketing; just buy the cheapest ones.

Whatever size you're looking for, from tiny AAA's to fat C's and
D's, the hard part is figuring out whether to buy the standard
alkalines or some other type. Until 1980, you had only one type
to choose: the silver "heavy duty" batteries, like the Eveready
types with the black-cat logo. But that era is long over.

What replaced those old "standard" batteries is a wide and
confusing range of higher-powered battery types: alkaline,
premium alkaline, rechargeable alkaline, nickel metal hydride
and lithium. (All told, 92 percent of the batteries sold
nationwide are alkalines, which offer from two to six times as
much life at roughly the same price as the old "heavy-duty"
type.)

It would feel glorious to declare one type the winner and then
rent a movie to celebrate. Alas, batteries aren't that simple.

In general, you can break down today's battery-operated devices
into three categories. First, there are low-drain gadgets that
sip power with all the gusto of an elderly aunt at afternoon
tea: radios, clocks and flashlights that you keep on hand only
for emergencies.

The vast majority of today's electronic gizmos fall into the
moderate-drain category: tape recorders, Game Boys, music and CD

tape recorders?

Why? I keep a tape recorder above my sun visor, and one in my brief
case.

players, electronic toys, pagers, boomboxes, smoke detectors,

pagers?

was this article writte in the late 1980s?

Gameboys were in the 1980s?

The article is a David Pogue New York Times column from 2001.

--
Ed Huntress