I have had my new iMac for a couple of weeks and last night the batteries on the bluetooth mouse ran dry.. I only use the iMac weekdays and weekends.. do you think a couple weeks is all that can be expected? Does anyone use rechargable batteries?

Yes, get rechargeables.

I keep a stand-by set of alkalines for use when the NMH's (my BT500 takes two AAAs) are being recharged.

I second that.
After the first pair of AA's in my Apple BT mouse died fairly quickly I changed over to rechargeables.
The only thing I've noticed is these die rapidly when they run dry, with no low power warning, so keep a spare set of batteries handy. The running time for each charge appears to be OK, they just die quickly.

What about the keyboards?

This kind of thing freaks me out about wireless bits. They look cool and work well, but I couldn't stand the maintenance.

I get two to three weeks from my rechargable 2000mAh NiMH

The orginal Lithium gave me about 6 working weeks - turning off at night and weekends. I am still on the orginal batteries in the keyboard some 15 months after purchase.

My tip get a recharger and 4 AA 2500mAh NiMH charge one set when they go flat so you always have a freshly charged set.

If you go to the eveready site you can see why Lithuim are used - max power in voltage until the end hence the mouse works at peak performance and then dies. With rechargeables I have never got better than 3 bars of 5.

cool.... I bought four rechargeable NiMH and luckily have a charger for my camera that will charge them... a little surprised that the original lithiums died so quickly

I think I'm sticking to cables for now

It's a shame the mouse doesn't have some kind of recharging dock.

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive recharger, say from Jaycar or Tandy? The brand name rechargers are $30+.

My bt mouse sucks alkalines dry in no time flat (pun intended.) The keyboard seems happy on its E2 lithiums.

Not an inexpensive option but grab a Sony AA Recharger with the Memory Refresh function @ $100 and a couple of 4 packs of Sony AA 2300ma NiMH batteries @ $25 and my apple BT keyboard and mouse stay alive (never turned off) for a 2-3 weeks on the powerbook which gets aspprox 5 hours use per day.

May not the be the performance some would think is excellent but i consider this pretty good having used a few brands of chargers and batteries through work. The memory refresh function does bring them back to life as good as new so i consider the lifespan of the batteries to weigh in heavily to the equation.

Cheers

Just had a good thought

Yeh go the recharging dock station for the mouse which runs off firewire 800 (i am determined to find a device i can use on it - obvoisly we would use USB 2) with a splitter to connect to the new USB 2.0 recharging port on the keyboard but they both still take rechargeable AAs as well so the transportability is still there. This recharging station would also have a front loading USB port for flash drives and 3 USb ports on the back - so a recharger hub. It doesn''t have to be a kit but would retail for the same price as if you were to buy the keyboard and mouse+hub/charger.

Anyone at Apple want to buy my ideas??

Then again with all these cables you might as well have hardplugged jobbies but most of us have cable clutter from USB devices and firewire.

Then again the concept of free mice and keyboards is still there when its needed ie in use but only hardplugged when charging which is still more convenient than waiting for batteries to charge. Ok ive talked myself back into thinkin its a great idea!

Cheers - off to the patent office - silent velcro!

Hey Edge,

Jaycar sell quite a few, one of which is a 5V DC USB charger for $19.95 (link), NiMH AA fast charger on special $27.95 (link), AA charger NiMH and NiCad $18.95 (link)

They also have high-capacity AA NiMH batteries for about $2 - 3 each.

JB

Has anybody tried using the Energizer Lithiums?
I've found they work great in the digital cameras. I suspect they'd last ages in cordless mice and keyboards.

@Byrd. Thanks (I should've Googled.) I'll pop into Jaycar on the weekend.

There are 2 types of the e2... The regular e2, and the e2 Photo (which is meant for digital cameras)... Anyone tried the e2 Photo? It's the proper lithium one.