Until new nano lithium technology comes in later in 2009, mobile phone batteries are still notoriously flaky. Just when you need to make an important call the battery indicator tells you the charge is all but extinct. You may have conditioned your battery in line with all of the advice and old wives tales floating around but still have to re-charge yours every day. Short of buying a spare and keeping that charged what can you do?

People like to buy cheap computers, it's somehow coded into our DNA. The problem with this practice is that often netbooks are cleared from stock after a few months of unsuccessful attempts at selling it for a higher price. These notebooks come with battery stored in the right circumstances but for too long.

Why is this important? If you have a relatively new PC the only problem you will get are error messages relating to the clock on start up. No big deal. If your PC is older then a low battery could be a nightmare. I had a PC which once lithium stocks canada every few months refused to boot. Rather than take the PC in for repair or start replacing parts myself the first thing I did was look at the BIOS settings. It was soon obvious that the BIOS settings were corrupt (wrong bus speed). I put a volt meter on the battery and sure enough it was reading 2.2 volts.

One thing that can cause that whole problem to be avoided is to keep spare laptop batteries. This allows one to be charged while the other is being used. This makes it an excellent alternative for people who are going on long trips, or are going to be in long meetings and won't be able to charge their battery. It just takes a moment to change out one battery for the other and the laptop is ready to go for another few hours.

The Makita BDF452HW cordless drill comes with an 18-V Lithium battery stocks-ion battery and it charges in only 15 minutes. That's a much quicker charge time than almost any other drill you can find. Along with the quick-charge, the battery life is also very good so you don't really have to worry too much about it dying on you.

What are you going to be using the drill for? Let's say that you are planning on building some light furniture and maybe will use the drill on weekends mostly. You probably don't need a super powerful drill with the most expensive battery technology. You could probably get by with a 12 volt drill, no need for hammering action, and you could probably do fine with a NiCad battery as opposed to Lithium Ion. Sure, a Lithium mines Ontario Ion battery would be really nice, and would charge faster, but if you aren't planning on using the drill for continuous hours at a time you could save a few bucks in this department.

So how long does it last? Anything from 3 to 9 years if you search this question on Google. Everyone has a different opinion. In my experience about 6 years is the average. It's basically a large watch battery and is constantly supplying a trickle of power to the motherboard. Just like many of my watches the battery can last 2 years or up to 6 years (Fossil watches don't seem to last long for me for some reason). How long was the PC in the warehouse before it was delivered? And, how long was the motherboard in the warehouse before it was installed in the PC?

Grooming items are iffy but worth checking out. Shampoo is a decent find as are scrubbies/loofahs. Items like Chapstick and Vaseline can often be found there and my very favorite soap (Yardley oatmeal and almond) is almost always available at the dollar store. Nail files, packages of combs, tooth flossing sticks are of value. Skip the cotton swabs (too flimsy and could be dangerous), make-up (due to lack of regulation), and make-up remover pads (can I just say UGH!?).