if your looking for the item in europe, check conrad website of your contry ( if there is one ) and seartch for product: 512304-TH (thats the one without extra bataries, just the charger, cheepest option if you have bateries allready)
found mine on conrad.nl (number via conrad.de) for 34.95 euro, 41.90 including shipping.
Great article Jeff. I have been using only rechargeables for years. Rechargeable batteries is the only way to go with digital cameras and any multimedia device. Just keep an extra set charged and on standby and you be fine.
Great write up. I have the La Crosse charger as well (got it after graduation) and it works great.
chris
http://www.yoursash.com
using an nimh full capacity does not destroy it, it simply counts as a full charge. An NiMH is good for 1000 full cycles so if you only use 50% of its capacity then you get 2000 half cycles, its a way to extend the life.
I got the USB charger for the rechargeable AA alkalines (pure energy) I use, also got a NiCD/NiMH slow charger.
Iâve had good experience with my NiMH/NiCD batteries (NiCDs used in clocks) but the memory effect is outrageous!! The 2 NiCDs I got have been draining since 8 months now with a good memory effect.
My PDAâs Li-Ion battery suffered a major memory effect for 3 months before I had to replace it. Yes, almost ALL batteries have the memory effect. I even tried to drain it fully, but it only charged for 10 minutes then stated it was FULL. Unplug the charger, it dies after 3 minutes. Thankfully, itâs been cleared up 3 months ago 
The duracell 2500mha battery I found in wal-mart acutally overheated and melted one of my disposable cameras. I couldnât care less anyways. That disposable camera was one I took apart and used as a flash instead.
I also got a ton of (recycled/reused/boosted) non-rechargables. I do boost and attempt to recharge them with the usb charger I got. It works. None of my ânon-chargeableâ have ever leaked or exploded at all, like the stupid company said would happen. One did leak, maybe cause it was dampened (found outside after the rain, inside a paper cup) and I just tossed it out.
Have you had any experience with boosting and renewing dead, non-rechargeable batteries before?
Donât try it on a NiCD/NiMH charger cause they wonât charge, since theyâre alkaline.
Pop me an e-mail and/or a video on youtube if you wish.
Iâm glad to give you my experiences.
PS. DONâT ALWAYS BELIEVE THE STUPID SCARE TACTICS THE BATTERY COMPANYS USE TO STOP YOU FROM CHARGING THEIR DISPOSABLE, 1 TIME USE BATTERIES. Itâs just bull shit.
Youâll find my e-mail addresses in 2 of my videos and the description of my 2nd oldest. You gotta scroll to the LAST page to find the second oldest video to get them from the description.
ChEeRs!!!
Nothing beats lithium AA batteries when it comes to performance. They have much wider operating temperature range, higher discharge current, lower self-discharge, and they weight half as much as other types.
Other batteries have failed me. Countless times I had an absolutely stunning photo waiting to be taken, I turn the camera on, and I discover the NiMH discharged itself by just doing nothing, the camera dies, I curse. In the end, alkaline is what I use mostly, and lithium in mission critical places. I use the rechargeable nimh batteries only in my cheapo $5 electric screwdriver.
Lithium batteries are not to be confused with rechargable Lithium-Ion and LiPoly, theyâre different. I use LiPoly exclusively for my model planes and helicopters, but thatâs a whole other bowl of enchiladaâŚ
Iâm sure you all know this but regularly using the full capacity of a NiMH Battery destroys it (severely reduces the number of recharge cycles). Priuses use only 2/3 of the capacity of their batteries.
great article! now does anyone know where a BC-900 can be found in Australia?
You need to try some decent NiMH, I too had given up on them and was using lithium in our cameras but I tried eneloops and decent charger and now have great results. Our cameras can take just as many pictures on a set of eneloops as they can lithiums and I have plenty of gear which sits in the closet for 6 months and still has full charge thans to the low self discharge of eneloops. Then also hold their charge better in cold weather than traditional NiMH.
There are actually Lithium-Ion in AA size, but theyâre actually called 14500. They have a nominal voltage of 3.7, which means theyâre about 4.2V when fully charged. This makes them unsuitable for directly replacing alkaline and nimh in most devices, though if you have a device that takes 2 or 3 AA, you can use 1 14500 Lithium-Ion rechargeable and 1 or 2 dummy cells. Not much sense in doing that, youâll have more energy in 2 AA eneloop.
Safety is probably the main reason why we arenât seeing standardized sizes for Lithium rechargeables used. Considering that consumers today already ignore the warnings on alkaline and nimh batteries, putting Lithium-ion in their hands would be disastrous. While nimh or alkaline at most leaks a bit of corrosive electrolyte, lithiums âvent with flameâ when mistreated⌠The situation is not made easier by the fact that there are about half a dozen different lithium-ion rechargeable chemistries, each preferring a slightly different charge algorithm. If consumers have more than two kinds of lithium and use the wrong charger, they might find a new fountain of flame in their living room.
That a nimh batteryâs label says â1300mAh, Charge 130mA 14 hoursâ is entirely correct. When charging at a rate that is one tenth of the batteryâs rated capacity, the charge efficiency is somewhere roughly around 70%, meaning that you have to put in 1.4 times the batteryâs capacity in order to fill it up. The âmissingâ 40% warms up the battery.
Regarding the cost of electricity, if we assume you treat your battery well and will thus get about 500 cycles out of it, youâll have put in 500 cycles * 1.2volts * 2AmpHours * 1.4 (charge efficiency losses) = 1680 watthours of energy. Thatâs 1.68 kWh. Assume that the charger and its AC adapter are somewhat inefficient, say a very pessimistic 50% efficiency 3.36 kWh. A kWh costs less than 50 cents in most parts of the world, but letâs assume youâre paying 50 cents, round it up, about $2 in electricity costs to charge a Eneloop AA battery 500 times. This is why people rarely factor in the electricity cost, even with this pessimistic calculation it is insignificant. How much does 500 AA alkalines cost?
Btw, to those of you who have the ânullâ problem with the BC-900, do keep in mind that itâs generally a bad idea to drain nimh completely empty. Cameras and such shut down long before the batteries are empty, but less âhigh techâ devices such as flashlights can be run past the point where it goes dim. If the flashlight uses more than one battery, it is likely that one of the batteries will go empty before the other, this results in the remaining battery âreverse chargingâ the empty battery. This is quite harmful for a nimh battery, and will greatly decrease its lifetime. nimh batteries also donât like to wait around in a discharged state for very long, so charge as soon as possible, and itâs okay, even recommended, to recharge the batteries as soon as you notice the flashlight dimming. The old urban legend about running flashlight until itâs completely dead in order to maximize rechargeable performance is wrong.
Many people use the term âmemory effectâ to describe all kinds of loss of performance, but the truth is that such a thing doesnât really exist in real life. The harsh reality of it is that batteries will die, and often itâs a long and slow death. Lithium Ion rechargeables degrade and lose capacity (i.e. you get less and less talk time / laptop runtime even on full charge) over time. It used to be as high as 50% degradation in 2 years, hopefully research and progress has managed to improve this a bit. Thereâs no memory effect involved, the battery just becomes weaker over time. Completely discharging Li-Ion wont magically make it perform better, itâs even outright dangerous to use a Li-Ion that has been discharged past the point where the device no longer operates on it.
So many issues, still so many rumours and false tips floating around about âmemoryâ and similar, itâs no wonder people just find it simpler to continue throwing money into the alkaline pitâŚ
Does anyone know where to get this charger in the Toronto, Canada area? Iâd really like to buy one but I canât seem to locate anyone who sells them here.
from Amazon.com 39.00 free shipping
"La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger" [Lawn
Patio]
Estimated arrival date: 06/05/2008 - 06/11/2008
I ordered this last week and i received this today!!!
I canceled and per one of the persons above i bought it from http://www.thomas-distributing.com 57.97 the shipping is 8.?? but the one i ordered as the 8 Sanyo eneloops,ordered 4 MAHA IMEDION too it came to about 76.?? i think i may have paid 10 over but i was just mad at Amazon, plus I wanted it for my birthday. 
I have learned to never buy any device which uses a
Lithium Ion battery if there is an AA device available.
Imagine how many cords/power supplies/chargers I would
need for three cameras, gps, scanner, two way radio, etc,
instead I have only two, one for the maha c9000 and one
for the maha c401
I canât imagine not having a lithium ion battery in my camera. I got it almost a year ago, and it is still working fine on its initial charge. I have not had to recharge the battery even once yet, and I have taken over 1000 photos, many with the flash.
In a device that can handle the higher voltage, Li Ion makes a lot of sense. You probably wouldnât want to use it in a TV remote control, for example, because you can get probably 3 years out of a standard alkaline AA cell at 1/10th the cost.
However, larger universal remotes with LCD displays, whose cost is great enough to include the cost of a more expensive battery, coupled with the fact that it will drain the battery faster and actually need recharging in a matter of days or weeks, make a lot more sense with a Li Ion or NiMH rechargeable battery.
Youâre spot on with most points and have a commendable knowledge of battery characteristics. ButâŚthe simple fact is that âmemory effect,â or voltage depression, does in fact exist for nickel-based batteries. Sure, its effect is so small in lithium-ions that in all practicality itâs not there. But in Ni-Cad and NiMH batteries it is a very real condition.
The term âmemory effectâ actually refers to crystalline formation on the positive electrode (in Ni-Cads it also happens on the negative electrode, hence the reason Ni-Cads have a greater tendency to develop memory). When these crystals form, they block some of the surface area of the active electrode from being able to absorb Hydrogen from the electrolyte. This translates to less energy for you, the end user to pull from the battery and a decrease in the mid-point voltage.
However, there is no need to ever suffer from memory effect. All you have to do is make sure to fully discharge your batteries down to 1.0 volt once every 3 months (every 1 month for Ni-Cads). If you are in the habit of running your batteries down completely in a digital camera, cell phone, or whatever before recharging them, then youâll never notice a decrease in capacity from memory. And the good news is, most memory effect that does build up is reversible. Just put the batteries through a âRefreshâ cycle on the BC-900 and youâll get most if not all capacity back.
Here are a some references that confirm my point:
http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-33.htm
http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-31.htm
http://www.duracell.com/oem/Pdf/others/TECHBULL.pdf (section 5.9)
Interesting comment about increasing NiMH battery capacity from the LifeHacker link to this article:
Those energizer rechargables are worthless IMO, within a week you are down to about half the runtime in a flashlight or whatever. No point in having 2700mAh if you have to use it all immediatly straight from the charger.
Older GP 1800mAh cells I have are performing much better - and some must be up around the 300 cycle mark by now. I can take them from the charger, and a month later still get some use. Whereas the energizers would be at the point where the digicam will turn on move the lens out, let you line the shot up and then shutdown before you get the first pic taken.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that they make them crap intentionally to put people off the idea of rechargeable so they go back to the old faithful alkaline cells which havenât let them down yet.
Item is currently (March 27, 2008) NOT available on Amazon. It is shown as a preorder item with an April 2008 ship date
I can confirm that using the BC-900 as a poor mans VOM works. IE you can put a alkaline battery in the BC-900 just to check the voltage level without charging it.
Iâm assuming the BC-900 doesnât begin charging until the 8 seconds are up (the period you have to choose a charging rate). Even if it does start charging before the 8 seconds are up it only takes a few seconds to see the voltage and pull the battery out and assuming the battery isnât hot or unstable for other reasons before you checked it out in the BC-900 a couple of seconds receiving 200mA is relatively safe.
This means I wonât be buying 9v batteries for my VOM anymore.
It also means I donât have to charge two batteries at a time as I did with my old charger. Having 4 independent charging circuits is another plus.
I now know more about batteries than I ever wanted to know thanks to Forrestâs batteryuniversity links and a few other articles I googled up.
My BC-900 was a v33, and completely melted itself while charging 4*AA cells (the ones supplied with the charger) at the lowest current setting. This isnât just a case of missing charge termination (the batteries had only been in for an hour or two, and at 200mA they shouldnât get that hot even if theyâd been in there for days). Fortunately I was in the room at the side and smelt burning, otherwise who knows what could have happened.
Iâd suggest anyone who uses a BC-900 keeps it away from anything flammable while using it. I wonât be buying another.
Iâve got one of those chargers. What you donât say is how stupidly difficult it is to use. Hereâs a quote from the user manual:
By pressing the MODE key within 8 seconds after inserting the rechargeable batteries the Refresh mode can be selected (The mode key shall first be pressed and held for about 1 second to activate the mode change. The subsequent pressing of the mode key will enable to toggle between the âchargeâ, âDischargeâ, âTestâ and âRefreshâ mode). The user may also select different discharging current by pressing the CURRENT key (See ânoteâ in Discharge mode and Table 2), within 8 seconds after inserting the batteries.
And whatâs with the âNULLâ readout when a battery is dud? Itâs really sad that the designer decided to use a geek word on a consumer product.
ps In other countries, these chargers sometimes are branded TechnoLine BL-700/BC-700