were they decent say 10 years ago?
I have a d walt XRP series 12 volt, but the batteries are junk, don't know if it would be worth getting batteries for it.
I would say that's about the time things started going downhill. As for the batteries being junk, all NiMH or NiCD batteries develop a "memory" of sorts and draining them down too quickly or over drawing on them will shorten their lifetime exponentially. Good news is you can actually have them rebuilt, vs buying new. I bought new packs when the time came for mine (I got them on a killer father's day sale for like $80 for a pair) but new packs rarely are that cheap.
Never used these guys but that is what they do for a living, but it looks like they also sell new batteries too.
http://www.voltmanbatteries.com/servlet/StoreFront
And here is some reviews I found of them online.
http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/2740
Obviously do some more research, and there are most likely other outfits out there that do the samething. You could buy the cells and try to solder and redo the packs yourself (You can damage cells so you gotta be good at it). Either way if you like the tool but have grown to hate the battery life and don't mind spending a few bucks rebuilding the packs then this isn't out of the question.
As far as tool life and usage on a battery goes voltage means squat. You want to know what the battery is rated for in Amp Hours. This is a little known fact that nobody really publishes. Think of it this way in layman's terms. Voltage is how fast something can run (aka sprint). So a 20 volt battery can really twist the snot out of something, but it means nothing if it can't run for more than 30 seconds. Your Amperage dictates how long it can run (marathon runner). So this basically dictates how long the tool runs during your building project and how often you have to swap out packs. Your amp hour rating is really what you care about TBH.
