On 4 Aug 2001 01:26:44 GMT, in misc.survivalism
(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
players, electronic toys, pagers, boomboxes, smoke detectors,
remote controls and flashlights that you'll use a lot when
camping, for example. The third category, high-drain devices,
has only a few occupants like digital cameras, palmtops, remote-
control toys, portable televisions and photo flash units but is
likely to see more arrivals in the next few years.

Once you've grasped that much background, buying batteries is
fairly simple: for low- and medium-powered equipment, standard
alkalines offer the best power per penny.

Battery selection for high-drain gear, however, is where the
game gets interesting. In a typical digital camera, standard
alkalines might last all of 30 minutes, as many a crestfallen
consumer discovers.

That's why some companies are touting something called premium
alkalines reformulated batteries designed to last longer than
standard alkalines in high-drain gadgetry. (The improvements
include, as Duracell puts it, "proprietary separator material,
enhanced cathode design and a high-power anode composition,"
just as you probably suspected.)

Duracell, for example, says that its premium battery, called
Ultra, lasts up to twice as long as standard copper-tops in
high- drain electronics. (Energizer's E2 line is also a premium
alkaline, but Consumer Reports says it's not much more powerful
than standard alkalines.)

On the other hand, Ultra isn't as effective in medium- or
low-drain electronics, offering an improvement of less than 50
percent, Duracell says, over standard alkalines. Any improvement
is welcome, of course, but remember that Ultras cost about $1
apiece in a multipack, twice the price of store-brand regular
alkalines. In other words, the convenience of Ultras is worth
paying for in your Palm, television or digital camera but may be
a waste of money in ordinary devices.

But even premium alkalines can't power a digital camera for more
than about 60 minutes of shooting, viewing and deleting pictures
still not enough to last the whole day at Six Flags, let alone
your two-week vacation.

The final step up, therefore, is lithium batteries (not to be
confused with lithium-ion laptop batteries) very expensive cells
($10 for four) that last five times as long as standard
alkalines in high-drain electronics. Only Energizer makes AA
lithiums. Duracell makes a lithium power pack called CV3 that
looks like two AA batteries fused together, but it fits only
certain digital camera models from Casio, Kodak and Olympus, for
example, that have been designed to accept them.

If you use a high-drain device almost every day (this means you,
palmtop and digital-photography addicts), the ultimate solution
to the battery problem is nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries.
Not only do they last even longer than premium alkalines, but
for the ultimate in economy, you can recharge them 500 to 1,000
times by snapping them into a charger plugged into the wall.

Rayovac's superb $30 charger (for AA, AAA and 9-volt sizes)
rejuvenates drained NiMH's in one hour or less, a great
improvement over previous chargers. (You'd think that engineers
would have devised a shorthand for this battery's name, so they
don't have to spend their days shouting, "Yo, Frank, should I
put these nickel metal hydrides over on the nickel metal hydride
shelf?" But they haven't.)

The trouble with NiMH's is that they lose their charge over time
about 15 percent per month. That makes them poor choices for
long-term locations like remote controls, smoke detectors,
digital cameras used only occasionally and, for that matter, the
kitchen battery drawer. Some people keep one set in the charger
and a second set in the camera, so they're always ready; but
that's a lot of complication. At this point, rechargeables
(including rechargeable alkalines, short-lived batteries that
you can recharge only a few times) represent only 1 percent of
battery sales. On the other hand, it's the fastest-growing
battery category.

If you'd like to minimize complexity and maximize economy, then,
the bottom line is this: Buy standard alkalines for everyday
gadgets. Cheap store brands generally do just as well as
big-name brands. In digital cameras, palmtops and other
high-powered gizmos, buy rechargeable nickel metal hydrides (for
gear you use daily) or Duracell Ultras (for gear you store
between uses).

Oh, and don't bother trying to conduct your own battery of
tests.

--
[Don't send mail, address not working.]

As an aside, I've been told that battery shelf life can be extended by
placing the batteries in the freezer.

Just be aware that the significant other is apt to complain when there
are so many cartons of batteries in the freezer that there is no more
room for the icecream......

Mr Fixit eh.