A Little Knowledge

… is a dangerous thing. When you think you know bits and pieces more than everybody else does, that does not make you smarter than them. It will only give you the confidence to mess up big time and make you look like an idiot.

My digicam have been eating up rechargeable batteries like no tomorrow. I read in the manual that you have to put the batteries through several cycles of discharging and charging to enable them to reach full capacity.

The charger that came with the camera did not have a discharge function. The manual recommended that I discharge the batteries by leaving the digicam LCD on until the batteries are exhausted. But I had a better idea. I went out and bought a flashlight to discharge them.

My logic, I told Wuan, was that I could totally drain the batteries, fast and cheap, without having to buy an expensive charger with a discharge function. Unbeknownst to me, these rechargeable batteries should not be totally drained because that will irreversibly damage them. That I didn?t know until I had ran through two discharging cycles.

Are the batteries damaged? I do not know because I never had them working long enough to take more than ten shots from the time I got the digicam until now. But what I do know is I am not as smart as I thought I was.

Now I am planning to get the new Sanyo 2100mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries and the Maha MH-204F Smart Charger that can separately charge and discharge 2 sets of batteries at the same time. Have I learnt my lesson? Time will tell.

Author: Peter Tan

Peter Gabriel Tan. Penangite residing in the Klang Valley. Blissfully married to Wuan. A LaSallian through and through. Slave to three cats. Wheelchair user since 1984. End-stage renal disease since 2017. Principal Facilitator at Peter Tan Training specialising in Disability Equality Training. Former columnist of Breaking Barriers with The Borneo Post. This blog chronicles my life, thoughts and opinions. Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.