Curious as to swap out average time

Im curious as to how often folks swap out their batteries.

Is it better to run the battery down till its at the point where it has to be recharged or is it better to after a week or two swap them out and freshen them up

I was thinking with Li-ion's there was no worry on memory cycles so after a week or two of daily or every other day moderate use it would be good to recharge a battery

With Ni-Mh I am wondering though I need to read up more on those for sure..


So just curious when does everyone else recharge/charge their batteries?

looking for a time frame

every week
every other week
once a month
every other month
every 6 months (eesh)

Thanks
-Archangel72

Most of my NiMh's are LSD Eneloops so I charge them about once a year (3 to 6 mo. for HSD NiMH's)....unless there is storm coming that might cause an extended power outage, then I like to top everything up.


When using a light I tend to charge them when they get to around 25-50%.....normally don't see a need to run them down to the point that they are even close to over discharged.

Depends on the usage cycle of the respective device. I usually try to time it so that the batteries get recharged before they are fully depleted... that way I only need as many batteries as there are in the devices without having or even carrying around any spares. The usual cycles are (from highest to lowest):
Laptop - gets charged on each workday due to plugging it in at work
Mobile phone - about every 5-6 days (recharge when there's only one bar left)
Portable cassette player - every one two two weeks (two weeks if there are workdays missing in one of the two weeks)
Boombox - between one and a half and two weeks (I usually check how much charge is left after a week)
Wireless microphone - variable, if there's a bar missing from the display at the end of a show, I check the voltage and estimate if there will be enough charge left for the next show, otherwise they get recharged
Flashlight - variable (will get recharged when it starts to dim)
Musical keyboard - before important gigs, unless they haven't been used since the last full charge, and if I estimate there might not be enough charge left for the next application (still testing)
Soap dispenser - still testing (runs on the first charge of LSD rechargeables for over 11 months now, will be recharged when it slows down noticeably)
RC car - drive battery will be fully charged after each run (or before it if possible), receiver batteries will be charged before each run (if possible, otherwise will be scrounged from another device), transmitter batteries currently are alkalines
RC forklift - don't know how to handle this yet, haven't played with it long enough to use up a full charge from the drive batteries; transmitter next time will get a newly bought still unused 9V battery

Others - heap of crap cells (all HSD) will be checked and charged every few months, as well as any HSD cells in devices not in use (such as the RC car) and lead-acid batteries.

My general tendency would be to recharge them when they are down to 40%, but this is hard to do because I can't estimate the charge level that exactly.