A couple of comments on battery capacity (based mostly on experience)... A battery may certainly be defined as OK by the manufacturer if it has only 1/2 its original capacity, but it rarely is defined that way by the user. A battery showing that capacity is not long for this world and will rapidly drop to 1/3, 1/4, etc., of original capacity. The reason is that whole batteries do not fail, one cell fails. A high quality battery has cells which are well matched chemically. As they age, one inevitably ages more quickly than the others - this process can be accelerated or retarded by the care taken in charging and discharging (and can sometimes be reversed by certain battery conditioning recharge algorithms.) For example, in lead-acid batteries, one does not want to drive the battery voltage much below 1.75 volts per cell, as there is very little charge actually left in each cell at this point and further discharge will only serve to drive one cell into deep discharge, which risks chemical damage. Again, all this is generally explained ad nauseum in the literature supplied by the manufacturers.
Paul O'Shaughnessy Affymetrix, Inc. ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Michael Garretson: [email protected] Dave Heald [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.rcic.com/ click on "Virtual Conference Hall,"
