New Battery Technology

[+dunos]

Panasonic hopes to make such dilemmas [such as batteries running out] a thing of the past when it introduces its Oxyride batteries this June. With a purported lifespan twice as long as that of today's alkalines and claims of even more power, the icing on the cake might just be the price - just $4 for four AA disposables.

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050407-4788.html

 

Regards,

 

Dan

[+Team Ullium]

Panasonic hopes to make such dilemmas [such as batteries running out] a thing of the past when it introduces its Oxyride batteries this June. With a purported lifespan twice as long as that of today's alkalines and claims of even more power, the icing on the cake might just be the price - just $4 for four AA disposables.

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050407-4788.html

 

Regards,

 

Dan

Thanks for the heads up Dunos

[+sTeamTraen]

It seems that they probably have fewer milliamp-hours than alkalines, but a lower internal resistance. That's what kills alkalines in high-drain applications. A GPSr seems to be a low-to-medium current drain; that's why you can get several hours of GPS use from batteries that your low-end (not powered by Lithium-Ion rechargeables) digital camera thinks are dead.

 

If you've got big pockets (to carry them, not for the money), the best value for money rechargeables for digital cameras are probably NiCd. They have the lowest internal resistance of anything apart from Li-Ion, so a 700mAh NiCd will give you a big percentage of the running time of a 2200 mAh NiMH battery in a camera, and they are a lot cheaper to buy.

[+Teasel]

Hmmm, that's interesting! I've got a headtorch with a 6V 6W bulb, currently powered off 5 x 7Ah NiCd F cells, giving me 7hrs of reasonably bright light. I've been considering upgrading the cells to NiMH, but your post suggests that drawing 1A through a NiMH isn't a good idea. Am I better sticking with NiCd, do you think?

 

(There's also the difficulty of making myself a charger - can I just use a constant current, or is it more fiddly for NiMH?)

[+Birders]

<<Am I better sticking with NiCd>>

 

Read somewhere (maybe somewhere in this forum?) that all the talk about NiCads having "memory" problems was nonsense. So how come we have boxes of totally useless NiCads laying about? In our family there are at least 3 notebook PCs, the batteries of which became totally useless after only about 2 years of use. Same with our first digital camera - only 3 years only but we now have 3 NiCad batteries which last for about 30 minutes after each l-o-n-g charge.

 

We wouldn't touch NiCads again.... unless someone can tell us the truth about them - it must be out there somewhere!