NiCad suffers from "Memory Effect". I was shortening it to just memory as you did until someone once asked me why don't they just make them without a memory. So shortening the term can confuse those that don't understand the technology.

I've switched over to the Sanyo Eneloop recently after having given up on re-chargeables for a while. It seems in the race to get the most capacity the manufacturers forgot about reliability. The capacity of NiMH went up so high that they would discharge themselves faster then you could use them and Lithium Ion rarely last more than a 3-4 years and NiCad which I uses to be able to run for 10 years are almost impossible to find.

I've found that a good charger helps too as most of the ones you buy from the stores don't fully charge the batteries or get them too warm. I bought a $40 MAHA and after a few cycles some of my old 1600mAh NiMH's are now lasting through two weeks of use in a baby monitor where they would only last a couple days before after charging in charger I bought at WalMart.

So I've went to a charge after use or every 6 months now and most of my gear I have two sets of re-chargeables so I can be charging one set while using the other so there is zero wait time and I'm never without a piece of gear. I have almost 4 dozen Eneloop's now with a couple of the $9.99 30 packs of AA's that Home Depot sells and some Lithium AA's for backup. Then my MAHA charger is a 12v in so I can power for various sources if the grid were to be down.