Q about Sony BC-CS2 battery charger.

I intend to buy a Sony camera in the near future. It comes bundled with
the seemingly ubiquitous BC-CS2 battery charger, but finding more
information about the charger has proved to be more difficult than I
thought. Can anyone please answer one or more of the following
questions -

Is the BC-CS2 a very basic charger with unregulated charging, a simple
C/10 type, timer-controlled or microprocessor-controlled ?

Or, to put it another way, how long does it take to get a full charge
(into, say a 2000mAh batt) ? Is it a "plug in and forget" type ? Does
the manual advise you to charge the battery for a certain length of
time and then turn it off to avoid overcharging ?

I live in a place where I have to send for almost anything from a
distant city. I'd like to know if the BC-CS2 will meet my requirements
or I'll have to buy/make a more sophisticated charger.

On 5 Jan 2006 06:49:04 -0800, mianileng.TakeThisOut@yahoo.com wrote:

> Is the BC-CS2 a very basic charger with unregulated charging, a simple
> C/10 type, timer-controlled or microprocessor-controlled ?
>
> Or, to put it another way, how long does it take to get a full charge
> (into, say a 2000mAh batt) ? Is it a "plug in and forget" type ? Does
> the manual advise you to charge the battery for a certain length of
> time and then turn it off to avoid overcharging ?
>
> I live in a place where I have to send for almost anything from a
> distant city. I'd like to know if the BC-CS2 will meet my requirements
> or I'll have to buy/make a more sophisticated charger.

Download the camera's manual from Sony's website. There's a good
chance it will have sufficient information about the included
charger to answer your questions, at least indirectly. As your
questions imply that the camera uses AA batteries, I wouldn't worry
much about the charger. If it's a timer based charger it's not
worth much anyway but it should do an adequate job until you are
able to get a better charger, which shouldn't cost very much. If
you can't find out about the charger until after you buy the camera
there's little harm done, unless spending an extra $15 or so for a
better charger would be a deal breaker.