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Re: Portable Power

Subject: Re: Portable Power
From: Walter Knapp <>
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 14:46:46 -0500
From: "Rich Peet" <>


> I hope that is clear and I did not shorten the concept to much.
> 

It's clear enough, but trying to fast charge NIMH on the cheap will 
almost certainly result in a much shorter life for the batteries, eating 
up your savings on the charger in premature battery replacements. Or 
eating a lot of your time monitoring them.

The way you can get away cheap is to find some old slow chargers for 
Nicads. You will be far less likely to destroy your batteries, and such 
chargers can be found for cheap or free. Slow charge does not need all 
those bells and whistles that new chargers have. It's the fast charge 
that does. Overcharge by just a minute or two at fast charge and you 
will have damaged your batteries.

I have a large sackfull of AA's for all the various things I have that 
use them. A fair investment in NIMH batteries, I will not buy a nicad 
anymore. I figure the good chargers are worth it to protect that 
investment. If I tried to manually monitor charging I'd get little else 
done, or sooner or later run the batteries into overcharge, which they 
don't take kindly to. My oldest NIMH are from when they were first 
introduced, except for the original set that came with the Portadisc 
(Fuji) I've never lost a NIMH.

I love the Lion batteries too, but they are pricy. Cost about $10 per 
battery pac for the Lion's for my new camera. A far cry from the ones 
for my previous camera, which were 5 times that. However, every single 
Lion I have for that old camera is still holding the same charge, 
including the original battery that came with the camera. Even the old 
Lion battery pacs for my old Sony MZ-R30 are still perfect.

Walt






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