From: Fred Maxwell <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:27:07 -0500

Chris Holt wrote:

> As long as they can handle the current demands of the Archos,
> they should be a good deal. I do recall reading about some
> issues with the 2000 Mah cells suffering reduced capacity
> after being used in high drain devices.

The Archos devices are NOT high drain. My electric RC airplanes are
high-drain. My SLR camera flash is high drain. Typical NiMH batteries are
rated for a discharge rate of up to 2C to 4C (2-4 times the current rating).
Thus, for a 2100mah battery, that would be a discharge rate of
4200mah-8400mah. Eveready's tech graphs on their AA NiMH cells bear this
out though their application manual specifies a maximum discharge rate for
their NiMH batteries as 4C. RC Modelers often push the batteries to much
higher discharge rates than even 4C, with some going as high as 10C.
Basically, if the battery takes longer than 1 hour to discharge, it's not a
high-drain device.

There are some issues with the 2300mah cells being fast-charged. They
prefer a slow charge of about 1/10C to attain maximum capacity, but I don't
think that the charge rates provided by the AJB would present any problem.

Regards,
  Fred Maxwell
Received on 2003-10-30