Great title, huh?  I love rechargeable batteries.  I hate the idea of throwing away batteries all the time, and in a house full of toys and gadgets (well, I guess toys is the right word either way!) we sure use a lot of them.  Going rechargeable means that we can always reach into the drawer and find fresh batteries.  Of course they aren't as cheap as conventional alkaline batteries.  Heck, before we went rechargeable we got a 25 pack of AA's for $5.  Were they Duracell?  No, but they sure seemed to last long enough.  Now I buy 2600mAh AA and 1000mAh AAA batteries.  We have a few flashlights using D batteries, but we haven't made that switch yet.  As a neat aside, I've come across adapters for replacing D batteries with AA batteries that fit into a D-sized shell.  I may have to try that!

I've found a new source for my batteries, and I thought that I'd pass it along; http://www.all-battery.com.  I found some great prices on there compared to Amazon, Buy.com, and eBay.  I only wanted to buy eight of each type (just boosting our supply), and finding smaller quantities at a good price is difficult.  It turns out that their best deal is buying their single packs!  In quantitites greater than 5, you pay $1.42/AA or $1.11 for AAA for Tenergy batteries.  That is hard to beat!  Shipping adds $5.05 (nice even amount...) and doesn't seem to climb very fast.  Beats every deal on eBay for sure.

When buying rechargeables, make sure that you don't fall for a lower price due to lower power output.  I buy 2600 or 1000mAh batteries, and even that isn't the highest power out there.  At that level though, the prices climb.  You can find 2000mAh AA batteries pretty cheap, but it doesn't seem worth it to have to recharge so often.  I can take at least 100-200 pictures on my digital camera (Canon Powershot S2 IS), though that's with little flash usage.  I should chart it for a month or so.  It would be interesting to see how long between charges.

I ordered the Lego Mindstorms NXT on Saturday so I'm looking forward to that arriving this week.  That was one of the reasons for needing some extra batteries (it uses 6 AA).  I plan on blogging about the NXT once it's in hand.  My boys and I can't wait!


UPDATE (8/10): My batteries arrived today.  Very fast delivery at no extra cost!  They seem to be fully charged.  I tested them out and they're every bit as great as I expected!  If you need rechargeables, definitely check All-Battery out!  They've also got a lot of other options for quantity and power output, along with chargers and other accessories.