johnridley | One more annoyance gone

Canon chipped the batteries for their HD camcorders, one of which I own. The high capacity battery that I bought with it (2+ years ago) had to have its own charging method and a 4-LED bar graph to show how much capacity was left in it. And every time I turned the camera on, it waited about 10 seconds then popped up a "unable to communicate with battery; continue?" message. Engineered for maximum irritation.

After the concert weekend, I decided I really would like to have another large battery for it. Turns out that the clever Chinese (I assume) have reverse-engineered the chip, and you can now buy "decoded" batteries that charge normally and give precise to-the-minute readouts of remaining time.

And the price is still $18 shipped for a battery that Canon charges $120 for. So woo-hoo!

I really wish it were Sony, or some company I'm used to making fun of, doing stuff like chipping batteries. But it seems like it's EVERY company now. Just try to find a company that hasn't taken SOME steps to keep people from refilling their ink/toner, for instance.

I just get really irritated when they put so much effort into making the equipment that I buy from them work against me.