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NiCd Batteries ALL Have Memory - Use NiMH Instead

My advice to all of you who made negative comments about the standard VP-100 Versapak “Silver” battery is to replace it with the VP-110 Versapak “Gold” battery. It costs about 30% more than the Sliver but offers 60% more energy (watts x time) and little or no memory effect. Be sure to recycle your old Silver batteries. They contain very toxic chemicals, such as cadmium, which are best kept out of landfills. Black & Decker and Sears have even prepaid the recylcing costs. Just figure the cost of a separate Gold battery into the cost of the tool, at least until manufacturers stop shipping the Silver Versapaks altogether. Read on for the thinking behind this advice.The Versapak Silver battery, which comes with nearly all Versapak-powered B&D as well as similar Sears Craftsman products, have “battery memory” despite what the creative folks who write the product listings at Amazon and other websites want you to believe. As talented as these folks are, they have not and cannot repeal the laws of battery chemistry. All batteries based on the nickel-cadmium (NiCd) design have memory which means they stop accepting a full charge if they are continually recharged before being fully discharged. Think of it as that “always full feeling” you get if you do a lot of snacking around the house.The newer battery chemistry is nickel-metal hydride or NiMH. Although not as new as the lithium ion or the even newer lithium polymer batteries found in cell phones and laptop computers, the NiMH design delivers more energy and weighs significantly less than NiCd. The Versapak Gold version is said to offer 60% more battery life than the Versapak Silver version. Most importantly, NiMH batteries suffer little or no memory effect. That makes them useful and valuable even without the big improvement in tool running time.NiCd batteries work perfectly well for those applications that drain the battery to its discharge voltage. For example, a construction worker will use a NiCd battery in a power drill until the drill motor won’t turn. At that point the battery has been discharged to the point where the memory effect during recharge will be minimal or non-existent. He or she simply pops in a fully charged NiCd pack and drops fully discharged battery on the charger. By the way, by “discharged” I do not mean zero battery voltage. Discharging a NiCd by taking it to zero volts, either by shorting out the terminals (a very dangerous idea) or by putting a high wattage resistor across it, will effectively destroy the battery. There are many NiCd conditioners around that properly discharge these batteries, but most consumers are too busy to use them on a regular basis. Now back to our story…NiCd batteries are terrible in those applications where the particular cordless tool is used for a few minutes and then put back on its charger. For example, think of a Versapak-powered DustBuster or ScumBuster. Fortunately, the latter doesn’t holster the tool on its charger, which means its battery is more likely to get discharged before being recharged. The ScumBuster also comes with a separate charger because of the shock danger of charging a typically wet tool in its holster.The DustBuster, unfortunately, is charged in its holster. A quick pick up with the ol’ `Buster and then back in the holster pretty much guarantees most owners will see the memory effect in as little as a few weeks. Performance will just get worse and worse until it will only run for a few minutes before it’s dead again.If you just can’t bring yourself to recycle those old Silver Versapaks and go for the Gold, I suggest you don’t plug in the DustBuster holder’s wall wart. When its Versapaks are pretty much dead (as in discharged), put them in a separate charger. Leave them in there overnight. It takes about 15-18 hours to bring a Silver battery to full charge.As I said at the outset, the better idea for the DustBuster or any other short use tool is to simply replace the Silver Versapaks with the Golds. Yes, it’s a big hit for the DustBuster which probably didn’t cost that much to begin with, but it will run for years just like it was brand new.

Update (5/17/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen.

The featured review for this product, Black & Decker VP100 VersaPak 3.6-Volt 1.2 Amp Hour NiCad Stick Style Battery Tools & Hardware, was written by A battery person.

The average rating for this item is 1 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.