I am of the same opinion. I come from the motorcycle world and I believe running a headlight is one of the best strategies for been seen during the daylight hours. Fortunately on a bike one is unlikely to run into issues with the po-po running a strobe light blinnky LED (unlike on a motorcycle where I've been hassled numerous times for having a blinking/oscillating headlight. I also run my car's headlights whenever the vehicle is started (no measurable difference in gas mileage or bulb life I have noticed) It's a Camry and came with the option to run the headlights that way automatically and they turn off the second I open up the driver's side door if the car is turned off.

But a blinking LED light does not use very much battery. Even a small battery lasts a very long time blinking an LED. My next blinky headlight will have an automatic on/off when it senses movement though because I do forget to turn it off sometimes.

WHen one needs to run at night and SEE the road a blinking LED does not cut it -even if you turn the blinking off it's not bright enough to light up the road. At that point one needs more power and a bigger LED emmiter. At that point a generator is helpful. The added minimal drag of a bottle generator in this situation is not a big deal to me since if it is that dark to require a light I'm not running full out any more due to safety issues so what is a few watts of parasitic drag?

One of these days I'm going to pick up a dyno hub for each of my bikes and rebuild the wheels. It's one of the reasons I didn't put SS spokes up front on my Sports when I put the CR18 rims on. Eventually I'll find a SA dynohub that actually puts out some juice and will re-lace it with new SS spokes then. But until then I've got a cheap Chicom bottle generator that I almost never need/use. Mostly it is for looks as such a bottle generator is pretty period correct for a 50's or 60's bike.