Merged Post II

Thursday, May 24, 2007
Batteries
I was reading a blog the other day where the blogger mentioned a friend who had batteries that were going dead in a fairly low power device - but critical use, and when they went to switch batteries, the spares were dead too.

This is a common problem. In many LOW power devices, the effective battery life is not really limited by the use of the device, but by the shelf life of the battery in question!

The moral of the story is - don't buy your spare batteries at the same time as your primary batteries. If you want to be really safe, figure out how long a set of batteries last for you in the use in question - and change them at say, 1/2 to 3/4 of that time. Assuming you are going on the 1/2 life change, buy your spares 1/2 way to the change time (aka 1/4) - at 1/2, put the spares in, and buy fresh batteries