help with batteries

[ratley]

I am looking to stock up on NiMh batteries for my minolta DiMage s414 and other appliances, and founds dozens of brands of batteries, mostly ones I have never heard of or seen on a review page, on sale at sites like batterieswholesale, batteryspace.com, and eBay.

Has anyone here been burned buying no-name batteries? My concern is that they are dead or mis-labeled batteries, or just poor quality.

ON the flip side, does anyone have loyalty to a specific brand?
Same question applies to rapid chargers - what do I do?

this is posted in the news forum as well, Sorry if anyone read it twice

[Mikey]

From my sample size of one, I recommend going with the name brand battery. When I got a Canon S-30 about 2 years ago, I bought a discount extra Li-Ion battery (about $30) instead of the official Canon NB-2L (about $60), and I alternated between them. The discount battery, labelled "for Canon NB-2L Hi-Power Li-Ion", worked fine at first. But after about a year of use, the discount battery goes dead after only a few pictures on a full charge, like 6 pics, really. It's completely useless now.

I just bought a new Olympus camera, and I'll bite the bullet and get the real brand backup battery.