OK - my favorite old drill cordless just died. I will give the old girl a Viking's funeral one day. It was supposed to be a POS that did just the dirty work, but wound up being so reliable it became my "go to" drill. I bought it for a song, and it wound up lasting 7 years under constant use.
So, off to buy a new cordless. A little research here, more on the net, etc. Li is the rage. And according the the Milwaukee regioinal rep, it will be the mandate within the year. He told me they will cease manufacturing other types of batteries for DIY and "pro" grade tools within 12 months. I have since verified this with the tool dept. manager at my favorite HD.
No reason to buy a dead technology, right? So no more NiCads. And with HD having their sale on all drills at 15% off with the return of a dead drill, that seemed a logical place to start.
What an eyeful. I wanted 2 - 3 Ah rated batteries for uninterrupted use. Since I do a lot of repairs, I may have to drill a bunch of screw holes immediately followed by driving the holes full of screws. I don't think I should have to replace the battery on a drill except once a day, so the closer to 3 Ah I got the better off I felt I would be.
Enter the DIY/semi pro niche. With only one exception, all the drills I looked at had >> 1.5 Ah rated in their compact series batteries< and has or will be moving to Sony to cut costs. As is usual though, it cuts performance as well:
I found out years ago that it isn't as simple as "since one battery is half the size of the other it will last only half as long". There is complicated engineering going in inside the battery that spreads the drain and generated heat out over the amount of cells in the battery. More cells = more usable life by a factor of X. (No engineering patter needed here, those that are interested can easily find countless posts by the EE wonks on this simple protocol).
So why would I intentionally buy a tool that performs poorly? I won't. At least not now. In the future, I may not have a choice. I am thinking that the manufacturer's saw a marketing opportunity based on the 15 minute recharge time and beating that horse for all they can.
Good for them! We get screwed with poorly performing tools at high prices again!
Robert