Marshall Brain's Blog

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Low batt 2

I eventually did end up setting the timer (see Low Batt post from earlier this morning). I located the quadrant, and then the sector and was able to find the beeping device. It was under a coat in the corner next to the garage door. It was a Motorola TalkAbout walkie-talkie -- the kids were playing with them yesterday, and one of the kids must have left one of them on. It's batteries were about dead.

What's up with that? It has three AA batteries in it. Now those batteries are dead, and we'll have to replace them, which costs $1 to $2. Yet some Motorola pagers can work for five months off of a single AAA battery, and that's 10-year-old technology. Why can't that pager technology (or something similar) get put into a TalkAbout walkie-talkie? With three AA batteries instead of one AAA battery, You could leave it on for 3 years without ever draining the batteries.