Wow, what a detailed response. Obviously we’re starting to beat the rechargeable vs disposable horse to death here again. But since the discussion is still relevant to the topic of this thread, I’ll follow up with the following:
I won’t do a line by line rebuke a la Tenkan style, but I’ll just summarize my own experience here. I’ve used disposable for a long time and I’ve used a rechargeable system of hearing aids as well. Through my own experience, I prefer the rechargeable system. Looks like Chuck (cvkemp is the same). I wonder if you have used a rechargeable system yourself yet, @tenkan? If you did, then I’d respect your opinion. If you haven’t, I’d still respect your opinion as well, but maybe a little less.
Oh yeah, I know all about the warning chimes for low battery warning on the Oticon OPN. I had them set to turn on. But I’ve been in situation when I’m in a middle of a call or meeting or conference calls or at a restaurant or driving where I’d get the warning chime, but was unable to react to it, either because I don’t carry disposable batteries in my pocket with me (my personal preference, I know you don’t mind keeping yours in your pocket, I do), or because I’m not predisposed to changing them in that situation, even if I had them in my pocket. And the HAs would go dead after maybe 15 or 20 minutes later on my OPN. So I consider those warning chimes not really useful and at times annoying especially when I’m not predisposed to react to them before they went dead. Maybe your Resounds give you hours of notice before they go dead, but my OPN (and we’re talking about Oticon HAs in this thread here afterall), only gives me 15-20 minutes before they go dead.
And no, my disposables don’t last 6 days on my OPNs by the way. I get usually 3 days, 4 days at best if I hardly stream at all.
I NEVER forget to charge at bedtime. It’s a simple ritual, if I go to bed, I take them out, so I gotta put them into something, not on the table, but the charger. So I don’t/never forget, unless I fall asleep with them on, which I never do.
If you keep your disposable batteries in your pockets all the times, then of course I’m without my charger more often than you are without your batteries. But I don’t need to be with my charger all day long like you need to be with your batteries all day long everywhere, nor do I want to. I just need my charger to be at my bedside at night, and I need one spare one in my backpack, which I never have had to resort to using the spare yet, unless I travel.
Of course Zinc Airs are available in size 13 and 675 for profound, but size matters. Have you ever seen Oticon fit a size 13 or 675 on their miniRITEs? That will make their miniRITE become bigRITE.
I don’t have “imagined disadvantages” on disposables because I’ve lived with using them for years already, so I experienced those disposable disadvantages in real life. The “imagined disadvantages” I mentioned are for those who haven’t actually lived with rechargeables yet, but are still adamantly against them.