In my usual somewhat picky way, I must differ a bit with those using the multimeter as a battery tester.
It will, of course, measure the voltage at battery terminals, but that does not really give a good test of a battery's remaining capacity. Good testers, and I must admit i havn't reviewed them recently, provide a load on the battery so that you're measuring it's voltage when it is actually providing power. With most types of cells this is necessary to get any real idea of how much power remains to be used. most cells will produce a higher voltage without load than with it, so you'll always think there is more left than there is. Of course if you can measure the voltage of batteries while they're doing there job, this is much more usefull. This can often be done with the probes of the aforementioned talking meter, it's relatively easy with 9 volt batteries, but how easy this is to do depends on the particular device holding the batteries. I'll try to get some currently available accessible testers and see which are best. Tom Fowle
