Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Look inside it? If it appears to have electronics - like an IC - it's
likely to be reasonably intelligent. Basic ones - like supplied with some
cheap drills merely use a DC power supply and a series resistor.

Laptop battery chargers seem much more intelligent.
Mine switches off when the battery is full,
as I can see from the computer,
which seems to have considerable knowledge of the battery -
what its original maximum charge is,
what is the maximum charge it has recently had, etc.
(Incidentally, I can put batteries holding different charges
in my laptop - a Sony Picturebook.)

Are there chargers which will give you similar information
about standard rechargeable batteries?

I do find chargers have a kind of "black box" behaviour -
it rarely seems to be explained what they are doing,
or when they will stop charging.


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail (80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland