Rio -- Consuela asked the same question last month. Start here: Consuela "Buffistechnology 2: You Made Her So She Growls?" Apr 13, 2005 5:22:51 pm PDT

I use rechargeable AAs, and they are almost as easy to come by as alkaline AAs.

I use rechargeable AAs, and they are almost as easy to come by as alkaline AAs.

Traveling internationally, though, you can't always depend on being able to recharge them.

Is there a wide differential in how long rechargable AAs hold their charge? I tried to use them when I had a pager, but it wasn't even slightly sensical. Really, only Duracell or Eveready (perhaps other name brands) were worth it. Generics or rechargables were too much work.

Thanks, Jon!

There is certainly a differential by type, if that's what you mean. Dunno the differentials by brands of the same type.

I keep three sets of NiMHs for my camera and recharge them once a month, whether I've used them or not. They've held up well for three years now.

My Sony laptop (four years old now) came with a lithium-ion battery, and I bought a second battery to go with it (it swapped out with the floppy drive). They got deep discharged a couple times in the first year, but mostly I ran off a power brick and the batteries stayed topped up. After the first year the add-on battery stopped taking a charge, and the original battery is down to about half its original capacity—it's only good for 30 minutes of word processing or genealogy apps., or 20 minutes of DVD at last test. The batteries cost too much to shell out for more, and they stopped making them two years ago, anyway, so I am tethered to the power brick.

My point is, I've had a good experience with the NiMH rechargeable AAs for my camera, and a bad experience with rechargeable Li-ion in another format, so I haven't yet been tempted to try Li-ion rechargeable AAs (they come bundled in pairs and are called CR-V3s), even though their capacity and endurance is reported to be much better.

Traveling internationally, though, you can't always depend on being able to recharge them

Precisely my thought.

Of course, I was all excited about my new camera, and going to do things with it tonight, but then I had a meeting, and then I had to watch the LWord finale, and book rooms for where I'm goign to stay, and and...crap, it's after midnight. Dang it!

Alas. My new computer is, again, nonfunctional. I ran System Restore in the hoopes that if the shutting-off-spontanouesly thing was a virus, it would fix it. (The power supply seems sound, and it doesn't seem to be overheating.) It shut off halfway through System Restore the first time, but the second time it got through it. But now, it won't boot. I get an error message saying that the system wasn't completely installed and I need to run set-up again.

Does that mean to run System Restore again? Because if it's anything else, I don't know how to access it. Blast this thing.

It could be anything, Zenkitty. Last time I had that problem, it was a motherboard gone bad.

Oh god, Jon. Please no. I just went through that.