Does a AA battery dressed as a C battery work the same as a real C battery?

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/adventures-in-rechargeable-batteries.html We have one. Sometimes I watch the numbers go up.

Buy the Eneloop batteries. Don't buy the Energizer batteries. We have about 20 of each. The energizer batteries lose their charge after about 3 weeks or so, which means every time I pull one out of the drawer, it doesn't work, and I have to charge it again to use it. The Eneloop batteries are supposed to hold a useable charge for several years, and I have pulled some out of my drawer that haven't been charged in 3-4 months, and they seemed to work just as well as one which was just charged. The only place I know of that carries the eneloop batteries at a retail store is costco, although we haven't found them at all costcos. We order them off of Amazon. We have about 20 AA and 4 AAA, and the AAA rarely ever get used. The AA's are constantly in use. I don't know if we have any baby toys which use AAA's other than the sound puzzles, pretty much everything needs AA or D.

Eneloops are also brilliant in things like remote controls or cordless phones, where they spend the majority of their time just sitting there. I get like 6 months out of a charge on the Eneloops in my Harmony remote. A month with the old-style batteries.

If you're buying online (and you should), go directly to http://www.thomasdistributing.com/. Best rechargable battery shop on the Internet and they'll set you up with exactly what you need. I've been buying from them for twelve years now, I think. Last time I bought a bunch of rechargables Maha Powerex was the go-to, and I guess now it's Maha Imedion, although I see Thomas is featuring Eneloop so that can't be a bad bet either. The Maha and Accupower chargers are great. One advantage of Maha over Eneloop is that you can get actual 5-10,000 mAh Cs and Ds instead of using low-capacity AAs in a spacer. (But then you need to get a charger that fits them. but Thomas will have that too!)

They won't last as long (the energy contained in an alkaline C-cell will be more than three times as much as the energy in one of your AAs). Not a huge deal as long as the power draw is low enough (they just won't last as long). If the draw is significant though, you'll drain your AAs very quickly (you get less energy if you pull more of the power out at once). NiMH C cells are not particularly expensive, even with a new charger.

OK, that was pretty easy. Any recommendations on brands of batteries and chargers? Or are they all the same?

Rayovac makes actual http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003D7LHJ0/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ that are pretty cheap. They have a higher rated capacity (3000 mAh) than any AA cells.

I have a La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower with more Eneloops than I can count and they are fantastic.