You’re on the computer, and all of a sudden the mouse arrow on your screen stops still and refuses to budge, forever pointing at the same pixel. Or you’re having a blast on the Wii when all of a sudden, a message pops up informing you that connections with the Wii remote have been interrupted. What the heck?
Nine times out of ten, what these freaky occurrences are telling you is simply that the batteries have run out in your devices. No, you don’t have to go buy a new mouse or switch off the game console and lose all your data, all you have to do is pop in some new AAAs and you’re good to go. Fair enough. But if you imagine all of the batteries that you would eventually go through in a lifetime, you’d have Mt. Everest in battery form. It’s not that big of a deal if you just throw your dead batteries away and never really think about them again, but if you’re lazy and you leave them sitting around on the nearest shelf or table and you start to see random dead batteries lying around the house, you might begin to realize what greedy battery gobblers your pet electronic devices really are. “Battery Mt. Everest” could make a great modern art piece, but it won’t do you any financial favors. Sure, your art might be able to garner you some commercial profit, but they don’t call them starving artists for nothing.
This is where AAA rechargeable batteries come in. These batteries are the ones that really do keep going and going even if they’re not Energizer brand because they technically never run out of juice. When they do, you can just plug them into the rechargeable and in a few hours they’re as good as new. However, not all AAA rechargeable batteries are created equal and there are pros and cons. Nickel metal hydride AAA rechargeable batteries have the greatest capacity and are safe to dispose in the trash after they’ve run out of energy, but they also are more expensive and they self-discharge quickly, which means that they lose power even if they’re just sitting around and you’re not using them.
In addition, it’s very important to charge your AAA rechargeable batteries with the correct charger, or the results can be disastrous—for example, charging NiMH batteries in the wrong charger could lead to an explosion. So should you opt for rechargeable over disposable, make sure that you use them correctly to contribute to the longevity of battery life, and your own.
