NiCD vs. NiMH

I was just wondering, are there still NiCD rechargeables available?
Because I just bought a fancy battery charger I did some tests with different batteries I have.
I found that NiMH batteries which were 2 to 3 years old get nowhere near their original capacity.
Then I tried some very old 950mAh NiCD batteries which are about 7 years old and havent been used for 3 or 4 years. It really amazed me that they still exceeded their original capacity, they were all around 1000 to 1050 mAh.
I found the same with a 3 year old cordless headphone which uses a pair of NiCD batteries which are charged whenever you put the headphone in it's cradle. These batteries exceeded their original capacity as well after a couple of refresh cycles to overcome the memory effect.

This gives me the idea that NiCD batteries last much longer (allthough they are not very environmentally friendly compared to NiMH).
Or is the lifetime reduced because of the much higher capacities of the NiMH batteries?

I have wondered whether there is some marketing hype with MiMh and whether they only achieve their stated capacity fresh out of the box. I have various brands which are struggling after only maybe 20 charges.

Golfdiesel - how are you measuring their mAh rating? The only real way to do that is to do a controlled discharge.

SMC - the quality of the charger has a huge impact on the state of NiMHs, I have found. A decent Ansmann 8-way charger does a brilliant job of revitalising my NiMHs

Matt

I wonder if the trick for li-ion's will work with nimh's?
run'em flat dead and full recharge for two cycles every month or two to bring'em back up to capacity? I had that problem with a different brand digicam, almost threw out an $85.00 battery when I learned that trick...it's still in use today.
my duracell nihm's (2300 and 2500's) have had a year and a half of ridiculous use being drained and recharged at least twice a week and are still going strong.

My charger has a test function in which it charges the batteries and after that it is going to be discharged with a constant current until the voltage drops below 0.9 volts. Then the battery is charged again.

The charge and discharge currents are selectable, discharge maximum 500mA and charging 1000mA when charging 4 batt's and 1800mA when charging only 2 batteries.