Is that USB charger smart or just a simple trickle charger?

Eugene: I am not sure whether it is a smart charger or a trickle charger. The only way I found about the Trojan in the software was through some people talking about it at work.

I would guess from size that it may not be all that smart as they can't fit much in there.

I run linux so no worry about trojans here either.

I agree with everything you wrote. I'd add that with normal NiMH, the higher the battery capacity the shorter the shelf-life. This is affected by quality too, of course, but if you've got some fantastic high capacity 3,000 mAh batteries they'll probably have a very high self-discharge rate. Eneloops work largely by being high quality and then trading off some capacity for lower self-discharge.

Picked up a Duracell charger with four AA NiMH batteries. I searched until I found one that said "charges 1 to 4 batteries". It's the one that says "15 minute fast charge", and that it shuts off completely when the batteries are charged.

They all came out of the box with a hair over 1.5v (I have an "inexpensive" analog multimeter). I love that rechargeables now come pre-charged.

I put a pair in the camera, put everything else away, and we'll see what happens.

Thanks again to all!

The low self discharge (LSD) batteries are a different internal structure - they aren't just good quality NiMH.
You get much lower self discharge but at the cost of 20-25% less capacity, however they keep the same output voltage for longer so if your device has a high 'low battery' voltage they may last longer.

Their initial output voltage isn't much different from NiMH - your measurement of 1.5V is faulty because the extreme high input impedance on a DVM means you are mostly measuring stray charge on the terminals, run them for a minute and it will measure 1.2V or so.

If you're shopping for them the original Duracells marked 'made in Japan' are repackaged Sanyo Eneloops.

ps. my earlier post it was 4xAA for $10 in Dell's sale - I forgot I put the other two in my GPS

I've had great luck with the eneloops.