Fuck 'em all! They must be manufactured with really shitty quality controls. There’s no way to know how long they will last, even in the same piece of gear.
And don’t get me started on rechargeables. I have a few things that use 4 AA batteries. After a dozen or so charges, their charge life drops by half or more. Probably it’s only one battery that fails to hold a charge properly, but figuring out which one is such a pain it’s just easier to replace them all.
Abd then there are those buil-in rechargeables, like in wireless phones. My old phone would hold a charge 3-4 days till it needed a night in the charger. Recently that dropped to about a day, so I replaced it. Same company (GE) – not quite the same phone as the old one was several years old and they don’t make it anymore. But same price, same function – on the outside very little difference. But right out of the box, the new phone won’t hold a charge any longer than the old one does after years of use (and which I disposed of as being inadequate). And to replace the battery alone is either impossible, or more expensive than replacing the whole product.
The whole manufacturing world must understand this. No one publishes anything about how long their product should work before batteries need replacing or recharging.
I have had amazingly good luck with my rechargeable batteries. I bought the charger with four slots, since my discman only needs two. I charge two up while I use to, and run them down before swapping out. I’ve charged the things many, many times, and haven’t had any problems with life span. What’s really cool is that my charger has a car adapter, so I can charge them in my car if I’m so inclined.
But there is nothing more frustrating than running out of batteries, especially when it’s 15 minutes into a 2 hour train ride, and I’m suddenly left to listen to the guy behind me muttering Hallelujah for the remainder of the trip.
There´s a huge difference in quality between brands, personally I´ve found that the jWIN Ni-Mh AA cells work very well, I get twice as much playtime as the previous, generic batteries that were suppose to have the same capacity (1800 mAh) Also how you charge your batteries plays a role, I use mine for a Digital camera and my MP3 Discman, both use two cells at a time, so I labelled them by pairs, A-A, B-B, etc, that way I know that they have the same charge always and don´t rob energy from one another.
You may want to look for stuff that use Lithium-Ion cells, another camera I had (until it broke a month ago) had a Lithium-Ion cell that was smaller than two AA cells (60/70%) yet it lasted 3 to 4 times longer and fully recharged 9 times faster.
And make sure you’re properly “training” the batteries. Charge them all the way up, then run them all the way down before putting them back on the recharger. Do this about three times for NiMH batteries.
Wow. I just did a search for “Ni-MH battery” and a thread from the last 24 hours pops up. You guys rock.
[hijack]
I want to see if I can run into John Kerry downtown today, and brought my camera. It’s batteries are dead. The camera (Sony Cyber-Shot U) says to use Ni-MH. Will using regular batteries hurt the camera? (And how do I tell the difference between alkaline and Ni-CAD (it’s NiCAD, right?)?)
Alkaline are your general Duracell, Energizer, or whatever batteries. NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) and NiCd (nickel-cadmium) are similar. It’ll generally be marked on the packaging, the battery, or both. As long as they are putting out the correct voltages and currents, I don’t see a problem. You just don’t want to mix old/new batteries or rechargable/alkaline because of power issues and apparently a chance of explosion, though I don’t know how much of a worry that really is. If it were my camera, and alkalines would fit, I’d probably try it. However, maybe we’ll get an EE to show up and answer definitively.
Usiing alkalines will not hurt your Sony, but they will only last for a short time compared to NiMH batteries. You’ll get probably 20-30 shots, that’s all, less if you use flash and preview.