TheOldFellow writes:

On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 00:24:01 +0100
"JDT2Q" wrote:

Hi Folks,

About 7 years ago I bought a cordless drill and have used it lots since.
IIRC it cost about £70 - not a professional's standard but good for DIY.

Don't bother with cheap drills.
Buy a Makita (or Metabo, etc.. i.e. good) Li-On.
You will thank God every few minutes that you did.
Nicad and Nimh batteries are a waste of money - however cheap they are.

I don't think NiMh belongs in the same bracket as NiCd. I
have a Makita with a pair of NiMh packs. The only problem
I've noticed with the NiMh batteries is their self-discharge
rate, which means that if you don't use them for a long
time, there's not much juice left, but I find that if I pick
the thing up, use it until the used battery is flat and put
that on charge, it has charged up before the spare pack has
run down. I've used this same pair of packs in a "bursty"
pattern (periods of no use, then fairly heavy use) for seven
years without any sign of trouble.

NiCd batteries are a different story, and NiMh -- which are
easily damaged by bad charging -- with a poorly designed
charger would be no good at all.

--
Jón Fairbairn
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2009-01-31)