Battery user Alan Lahtinen knows that much of what we use runs on batteries.

"Everything from iPods, cordless drills, cell phones, you name it, right?"

You would think we could just charge them all the same, but that's not the case. Take Alan's camera for example.

"You are supposed to charge it every week just to keep the battery up to where it's supposed to be," he said.

At Battery World they know a thing or two about batteries. For one thing, what a battery is made of determines how you should use it and charge it.

"If it's a NICAD, discharge it fully, then recharge it fully," Richard Granholm of Battery World said.

But what if it's made of something else?

"If it's a nickel metal hybrid, it doesn't need to be fully discharged. Same with a lithium ion battery," Granholm said.

And lithium batteries like the one in many cordless drills should not be used until they run out of power.

"Our tests show that you need to monitor lithium batteries. For some, when they're run down completely, they cannot be recharged," Peter Sawchuk of Consumer Reports said.

Lithium batteries, in things like computers, have a protection circuit to prevent that from happening - so-called "smart batteries". If you leave your computer plugged in all the time -remove the battery. Otherwise, it will begin to lose capacity.

Alan found that with the lithium ion battery in his camera.

"It just lost capacity actually," he said.

He got five years out of it which is good for lithium. Typically, they begin to lose performance after about three years whether you use them all the time or not.

And with all rechargeable batteries, you need to remember to recharge them because they lose about one per cent of their power per day.

"If you charge up a couple of double A's and put them in your digital camera, and put it in your drawer for three months and pull it out thinking it's charged, you'll probably only get one or two pictures out of it and then you'll have to recharge again," Granholm said.

A new type of nickel metal hydride will retain 85 per cent of its charge for a year.

And if you have a battery pack to a cordless tool that just doesn't seem to be holding its charge, Battery World rebuilds them-- putting in higher capacity batteries which give your tool more performance.

You can find more on how to get the most out of your batteries simply by reading manuals or going on line.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen.