Peter Huebner wrote in
t:


It's always interesting to me how people's experience varies.
I have found that nicd batteries in cordless drills die on me in
relatively short order - counting the hours of use I get out of them.
Why? Because I don't discharge and recharge them often enough. I'm not
using them professionally all the time, they may get an intense burst
for 2 weeks or 2 months, and then sit around unused for a few months.
Nicd don't seem to like that, they die. You come back to the tool some
day and they just won't take more than 2 minutes worth of charge.


*snip*

NiCds don't like being over charged. Some of the cheap chargers are
nothing more than a regulated power supply (not a good regulated supply,
either) and can cook your battery if left on and forgotten about.
Seriously, now, what cordless drill owner hasn't forgotten about their
charging battery?

Avoiding the charge/discharge/self discharge cycle would probably also be
a good thing. A decent charger could actually prevent such a thing
(There are conditioning chargers out there that discharge a battery fully
then charge it back up.)

I guess the whole point of this post is not to say the battery
technologies are bad, it's the charging systems. If we had more
universal batteries, I'd be willing to pay $200+ for a smart charger that
stopped charging when the battery was full, conditioned NiCds every so
often (might have to be a manual option), and generally took better care
of the batteries.

Puckdropper
--
I bought a cat toy with an infrared thermometer feature.