Will we ever see 'universal' cordless batteries.

[Bob F]

....

I doubt it.

[Tony]

Ahh. You didn't mention a laser printer in your previous post.

[salty]

It's a VERY common business model.

[salty]

I didn't think I needed to. I was talking about the insane price of the precious drops of ink in a typical inkjet cartridge. Folks talking about getting better mileage out of inkjet cartridges struck me as part of the insanity.

Imagine talking about getting slightly better mileage in your car when gasoline is $1500 a gallon. Absurd, isn't it?

[Michael Dobony]

My Milwaukee batteries have a built-in charge indicator. Some batteries are reversable (old porter cable and milwaukee come to mind) to change the balance of the drill. I found that a nice feature when I was borrowing them. Also the quality of the batteries varies considerably from one manufacturer to another. Battery design can make or break the quality of a tool. Universal batteries would eliminate innovation of design.

[AZ Nomad]

Actually, it is the charging circuitry that varies considerably.

[Jon Danniken]

Dunno about tools, but that's why inkjet printers are so cheap. It's also why some companies (Epson) make is damn near impossible to use anything other than their own proprietary (chipped and coded) ink cartridges.

Jon

[Bob F]

For inkjet printers, this is likely true. For battery drills, I doubt it.

Maybe why I've never bought an inkjet printer. Waaaaayyyy too expensive.

[Stormin Mormon]

with my Epson printer, the aftermarket cartridges just don't have the print quality. I'm going back to the expensive Epson ones. They cost more, but a year from now the 10 cents a sheet won't hurt as much. But the quality will still be there.

[vjp2.at]

You can get a battery bay from Radioshack and retrofit it into your device.

But this is like computer printers. My first printer used standard typewritter spool ribbons which cost a buck. I was a fool to throw it out after a dozen years.

Now if someone in CHina can make priter ribbon retrofits!

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]