On Batteries

I bought new rechargeable batteries this weekend. The old pair I was using were Nickel Cadmium and had something in Japanese written on the side. The problem I had with them wasn't that they couldn't hold a charge for more than a day or two — though that was most certainly the case. It was that they had to be charged together in a cradle, meaning I only ever had two or zero batteries I could use. Nothing in between.

It's important to me to be able to have a spare battery around while the other charges, so I went out and bought four Energizer e2 Nickel Metal Hydrides. These things charged in about 8 hours and after listening to my iRiver all week, the device finally went from showing four bars of battery strength to three bars on Friday.

Ordinarily, I'd have had to swap the batteries out on Wednesday.

So I'm liking these new NiMHs. I'm liking them a lot. I'll probably go through one every six to eight days at this rate, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with the other batteries I don't need anymore. They're rechargeable. They work. They're not broken, they just suck.