Anything that you can do to inform yourself about your little furless Macintosh friends and their behaviour, from the outside in, has to be A Good Thing. Starting from whatever gen you can get from manufacturers, commentators, rare potatoes and fellow-enlisted here, you can generate at least a glimmering of the ineffable from what you measure as well as what you see. Eight 1.2-V cells in series (or series-parallel) should charge to 9.6V nominal. Add in the normal fudge-factor for Ni-Cd batteries and the best that you are likely to measure is about 10.8V when new and fully-charged. This value and a multimeter then provide you with a much more immediate assessment of a battery's condition than does a dampened finger held aloft.

Although they exhibit 'memory' effects, which might better be described as 'forgetfulness' effects, Ni-Cds make good batteries. As secondary (rechargeable) batteries they need care and feeding, but they are not anything like as fragile as Li-ion batteries.

de