Hi All,

As Christmas approaches I have come to the conclusion that PICs and other Microcontrollers using minute amounts of power and having the ability to put themselves to sleep is not neccessarily a good thing.

Many moons ago when I were a lad, you would receive toys for christmas and birthdays that required batteries. If you were really lucky a set of batteries *might* last the whole day but more often than not they would have died within hours.

My son is currently playing with a VERY noisy toy that he got almost two years ago and I believe it is still on the original set of batteries. The house is full of similar noisy toys that just wont die even if you dont switch them off

Whilst in engineering and environmental terms this is a major achievement, not only do the batteries last longer but they also take much smaller and fewer batteries, as a suffering parent it is a real annoyance

I dread to think how many other noise making devices will surface in just over a months time with two lots of birthday and christmas presents being opened within an 8 day time period.

Time to invest in some noise cancelling headphones I think

Obviously this moan is tongue in cheek as at least one of the forum members is earning his living from developing such devices.

Now if only my house was so miserly with electricity !!!!