Batteries are everywhere nowadays, but most people don’t know enough about them to purchase the right type and use them properly. I am no battery expert, but I have done a good deal of research on them.

Battery Rule #1

Don’t let rechargeable batteries discharge all the way. Modern batteries don’t suffer from the same type of “memory” problems that older batteries used to and do not need to be discharged all the way ever. In fact, its best to keep the battery from being discharged more than half-way, because the more that they discharge, the less life they have. Most Hybrid cars are actually designed to only let the batteries discharge half-way, to prolong their life.

Battery Rule #2

Use only rechargeable batteries. Batteries are terrible on the environment and most people can’t recycle their old AA and AAA bats somewhere. Rechargeable batteries have come a long way and are now much better, but you have to get the right kind of battery and the right kind of charger. I recommend using SANYO enelope batteries, which come pre-charged and are a new class of “hybrid” batteries that maintain their charges much longer.

Not all battery chargers work the same way and most of them will actually kill your batteries by over-charging them because they are not smart enough. I highly recommend the La Crosse Technology Chargers, which can charge 1-4 batteries (cheap chargers can only charge 2 or 4 batteries at a time).

Battery Rule #3

Keep your PC and networking gear plugged into a battery backup to keep your stuff running through power outages. If your PC suddenly looses power then it may do more damage then just loosing any unsaved work, it may actually corrupt part of your hardrive (scary thought). I recommend using APC brand battery backups. For a simple battery backup, you can use this APC UPS.

by Dmitriy Zasyatkin

Psst… Dmitriy Zasyatkin hopes you enjoyed learning about Batteries, and if you learned something new today, then please leave a comment.