[57north-discuss] "Fake" CR2032 batteries.

[Tony Travis]

On 27/10/14 13:02, Peet42 wrote:
> 
> Tony, your linked article talks about the difficulty in finding the
> "mysterious Chinese factories" churning out the "real looking"
> batteries.  The reason they look real is because they *are* real, and
> the Chinese distributors are just buying them at various points
> throughout their shelf life - there are no factories!

Hi, Peet.

So, we have a lot of 'dodgy' CR2032 batteries on the market anyway...

> I spent the best part of 20 years as a computer engineer, and one of the
> hardest things I found to get across to my customers was that they
> weren't saving money by buying a multi-pack of CR2032s as when the one
> they put in the motherboard died all their "spares" would be dead too.

OK, I've been building computers for the past 35 years :-)

A lot of that time, like now, I've been resurrecting old computers for
re-use and I often find the batteries are flat because the systems have
been powered off for a long time - It's not just the battery shelf-life.

In the past, I've always bought brand-name batteries from a reputable
supplier and, I must admit, I was absolutely astonished when Iain got
CR2032's at such a low price from PoundLand - Well, now we know why!

I also laboured under the embarrasing misapprehension that most CMOS RAM
batteries were 'trickle' charged until I looked into it recently.
Rechargeable batteries were used in the past and we were warned that the
PC charging circuit used might make disposable batteries explode!

Maybe this was just an urban myth, like the 'fake' batteries?

Bye,

  Tony.

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