Simon D. Williams wrote:
On 13 Jan 2006, John wrote:It's difficult to know the age of the cell when you are buying mail order. With AA you can buy a bunch at Costco or Walmart and move on. Between the old Macs and Apples I've bought a few of these, and for whatever reason they don't last that long (the originals did however).The 3.6v batteries are available from Radio Shack, although a bit pricey ($16 last time I checked)... last time I bought one I checked the dates... of the three in stock, one was about to expire while the others both had 5 or 6 years to go, so I guess you have to watch out for that.
Yes, the turnover on wire-lead lithium cells is pretty low, especially at non-high-volume electronics stores. And many battery manufacturers use cryptic date codes, so it's hard to be sure. I've bought several at surplus stores for about $1 each, so I was more worried about whether they had been stored without their leads shorted than about their remaining shelf life. ;-) So far, so good... -michael Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it is seriously underused."