At 01:57 PM 7/6/02 +0100, you wrote:
>I might be totally wrong here but if capacitors have leakage, won't that
>affect the battery life ?

Ceramic caps have negligible leakage compared to the circuit or even
the PCB unless it is very clean (>10,000M ohms). Electrolytics have
more, but still typically << 1uA, depending on the type. For
something like alkaline AA cells you can put the cheapest aluminum
e-cap in there and not worry. For 10+ year life from a Li battery
you might want to look more carefully.

So, the effect on battery life is not much. If the circuit
stops working due to the cell internal resistance increasing, that,
effectively, results in much more reduction in battery life.

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
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