Fast Recharging Batteries

The negative side of all the new, exciting electronic toys is they eat batteries like there's no tomorrow.  Several years ago I had a brief flirtation with rechargeable NiCad batteries.  They took forever to charge, developed a memory that reduced their capacity over time, and didn't have the oomph to power a lot of things include digital cameras...  That same time a brutal price war brought alkaline battery costs at places like Costco to the point where rechargeable seemed a moot point.

About a year ago I started playing with NiMH rechargeable batteries.  They solved the problem with memory and oomph, but still took a long time to charge.  Even a fast charger took 2-4 hours.  Rayovac has solved my last complaint with a new recharging system called I-C³.  A digital chip in the battery talks to a special charger to let the battery recharge in just 15 minutes.  Put the battery in a regular charger, it takes the normal amount of time.  Put a regular battery in the special charge, same thing-normal time.  Now it's possible to charge a spare set as fast as you can drain the batteries in your camera.  I've stopped using alkalines.  Check them out at www.rayovac.com.