> Just an aside: but I would not suggest using one of those Alkaline
> "Rejuvinators." I gave one to my father on his birthday last year, and
> have not had much luck with it. The gimmick is: it will only recharge
> partly used batteries. It will not recharge batteries that have been
> drained to nothing. It does not recharge them to anywhere near their
> original condition. It will only recharge a particular battery 3 or 4
> times until it's completely drained. Because of all these conditionals,
> it is hard to tell if it is actually doing its job... IMHO, it's more
> trouble than it is worth.
Actually, I'm using a version of one of these I got here in the UK. I go
through a lot of batteries for my pda, palmtop, walkman, cd player, flashlight
(`torch' for the Brits :-), game gear, etc. My experience is (1) pull
batteries out and replace pretty soon after you get a `low battery' warning.
(2) the recharging can be a bit dodgy, so I have a single cell flashlight that
I use to get an indication of the current sourcing capacity of each cell
after charging, and toss the battery if the light doesn't appear reasonably
strong. True, the re-charged version is not as good as new (I find the
system works about the same as the Renewals I had in the US), but I've
been able to make a definite reduction in the number of AA cells I throw
away.
rob.
-- ------------------------------------------------------- Rob Miller, Ph.D.Biomolecular Structure and Modelling Unit (BSM), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University College / Gower Street / London WC1E 6BT. United Kingdom.
Tel: 44 71387 7050 x2303 Fax: 44 71380 7193 home: 44 442 65092 Internet: rmiller@bsm.bioc.ucl.ac.uk http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/~rmiller -------------------------------------------------------