NiMH Battery Chargers

An interesting sidebar on Blaze's area of study (see previous post re: Matt Blaze) is one that he did on the performance of some NiMH battery chargers. Yes, he wanted to find out, like most, what the hell happens with our batteries, and why they don't keep their charge and seem to fail so quickly. Apparently, NiMH rechargeable batteries, used in most electronic toys, such as digital cameras and MP3 players, lose their charge in trickles over time. The best advice is to charge the batteries close to when you're going to use them -- but that screws with the spontaneity that you got the toys for in the first place -- and I'm not sure about you, but planned spontaneity sucks. As well, every charge of NiMH batteries damage the batteries a little, making them worse over time. Now I'm not one to cry conspiracy, but I will here. We can send robots to Mars and spaceships to the outer reaches of the solar system that depend partially on recharging batteries, and we can't figure out how to perfect rechargeable batteries for consumer electronics? I don't buy it. I think the battery manufacturers are all in cahoots, with the full intent of draining our wallets as quickly as I can snap digital pics.