They're both old and don't have much capacity. My guess is about
10-12 years old. No manufacturers labels. They came from a battery pack manufacturer that didn't want to ship such junk in their products. Most in the pile are AA but there are a few boxes of AAA. I use them as needed.Of course. However, I have a box of NiCads and only a few NiMH. My cameras and most of my handheld radios use NiMH batteries.
True. I'll stick a power supply on the mouse and see how low in voltage it will run. 1.0V sounds a bit low. Alkalines are usually considered almost dead at 1.1VDC. However, the discharge curves vary somewhat by brand. See graphs at bottom of page:
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once had a Garmin GPS-45 that absolutely insists on 1.3VDC minimum and would therefore only work with alkaline batteries.
You might be correct. I'm just too lazy to test or calculate the relative merits. At my present rate of consumption, my pile of under capacity NiCads should last perhaps another 10 years. By then, we'll have fuel cells or thermo nuclear battery packs.