ORIGINAL: alaursen
In my opinion, NiCads were the bigget scam to ever hit the market. Because of memory effect and the tendency to grow internal ''whiskers'' over time, they have a very limited lifetime compared to NIMH. Manufacturers loved to put the in their products like power tools because they knew it would create an endless market for the battery replacements (at very hefty premiums). When they fail, it is pretty abrupt from my experience.
You could spend time and money trying to ''cycle'' the lfe back into them, but I strongly recommend switching to NIMH, especially for the receiver where reliability is critical!
Art
I do not know where you picked up the information you are quoting, but; it is very much in error. As one who has spent many years in the electronics and instrumention field where battery life, reliability and safety are very important, it is a proven fact that NiCad has a superior record to NiMh. Now, NiMh has improved much over the past few years but still lags in many respects. You are quite missinformed on the memory myth as apparently on several other items. Check out the following for some good and valid info on batteries:
http://www.hangtimes.com/redsbatteryclinic.html
http://www.camlight.com/techinfo/techtips.html
http://www.whenshtf.com/showthread.php?t=2153
http://www.srbatteries.com/nimh.htm
http://dansdata.com/gz011.htm
http://users.frii.com/dlc/battery.htm