Robert Green posted for all of us...

To keep back on topic, today I am recharging all the NiMH cells that I fully
recharged at the beginning of the year. My 4 cell LaCrosse charge has an
LCD display that reads out all important battery parameters. If I stick
them in the charger after 6 months and they are at 0 volts, off they go to
the trash. If they accept a charge well above their rated capacity, in the
trash they go. That process alone has increased overall battery reliability
incredibly. The wedding photogs I know swear by them. A hinky NiMH cell
can spell disaster if it causes them to miss a "money" shot.

Life's too short to "burn off whiskers" (when I tried that, the whiskers
soon grew back). I stopped when I had some explode - I charged them inside
an old .50 cal ammo box. The AAA's sound like .22's and the AA's sound like
.38's going off. Life's also too short to get caught flat-footed with a
battery that *should* have been thrown out but wasn't.

NiMH cells are enough of a problem when they're in tip-top shape, especially
in cameras. As someone else noted, they are most useful only hot from the
charger. Every hour they are out means a subtle drop in voltage that makes
a digicam read them as dead when they still have plenty of current left.

If I was dirt poor I'd probably push every milliamp second out of them but
I'm not, so high-ho, high-ho, in the trash they go. The LaCrosse charger
proved one thing - Ebay NiMH cells from China are HORRIBLY overrated. Those
marked 3000 are hardly 900 mAh.

I can't recommend the new chargers with individual cell readouts highly
enough. Expensive but worth every penny in culling the battery herd. Tells
you how much of a charge the battery has taken, has "recondition" modes,
etc.

La Crosse Technology BC-9009 AlphaPower Battery Charger

I'd post a URL but all of them are 8 miles long and include ID numbers.
Someday Google will learn that people don't send URLs that are 100's of
characters long to other potential customers and yes, I know about TinyURL -
that still doesn't remove the tracking numbers that vendors like to stuff
into their URLs these days. Track this Google --!--

http://www.google.com/search?q=La+Cr...nology+BC-9009

OK - that works.


I looked at the results and at the bottom of the page is one called
"meltdowns".

Just reporting an observation no scare tactics involved...

I am offering NO opinions but I don't pay much attention to "reviews" of
products. I think some posts are reimbursed but that is another topic.

--
Tekkie