Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
You simply don't get it. I don't care what the chemistry of the battery is, no does any consumer. We want the products to work as they are reasonably expected to. For a product that is intended to be used outdoors that means getting left outdoors (or at best in a garage). Many electric cars use similar battery chemistry to those batteries used for bicycle lights (lithium...) Do you expect their owners to remove those battery packs after every use and store and charge them inside? Of course not, doing so with bike light batteries IS CODLING them. When treated as most will, they don't last much longer than 2 years for the best quality ones.
Fine, if you just what the products to work as they are expected to without doing what is needed to keep them from premature failure, you'll just have to expect things to fail. I suspect that you fail to pump up tires because you just expect them to be full of air; that you don't change oil in your car because you just expect it to last forever; that you don't clean your chimney because it should just clean itself.
Hybrid and electric cars have very sophisticated systems to keep the batteries from being killed by heat prematurely. But you pay a premium for that protection and the batteries on a hybrid or electric car will have to be replaced eventually. It's the nature of the beast.
Most Li-ion batteries have protection circuits that also keep them from being damaged by heat or, more specifically, to keep them from causing damage to your house if they overheat. But, if you, as a consumer, store them over 90F for long periods of time, it's not the battery that fails, it's the consumer. If you don't want to treat them in a manner that keeps them from failing every year, then expect them to fail.
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
And while you may not believe you need to spend much time getting your bike ready to ride, your simply mistaken. That you have to spend ANY time to get the bike (or yourself) ready for a ride is more time than I need to spend. I can just hop on and ride (granted I do have to open the garage door). Further, I can take as long a ride at night as I choose with no need to concern myself that I don't have enough battery power for my lights...
Unless you always ride with a full nights worth of battery power for your lights YOU CAN'T SAY THAT.
I have said before that I can get a full night's ride on battery power if I like. It's easy. I just carry enough batteries to do so. A single lamp on high power will last about 3 hours. If I run one lamp at a time, I get 9 hours. If I run one light at a time on low setting, I can get just as much light as you can with a dynamo light for about 6 hours. I can gang batteries together to get longer run times. I
have done all night rides, several times. It's not that difficult.
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
Sorry, but with their frensel nature, the angle bicycle reflectors work is quite wide, hardly laser beam like as your implying, perhaps you need to review your college level optics. And NO BICYCLE LIGHT overwhelms the light from reflectors, especially in the day time... Cars still have more light, especially as they adopt the same updated LED light sources. Since cars will ALWAYS have more power available for the light than any cyclist is going to carry.
John Schubert has already covered the failings of reflectors. Reflectors on bikes aren't
fresnel lenses either. They are
retroreflectors, specifically square retroreflectors. They can reflect back at a wider angle than a flat surface, they are still limited by the principles of optics. You can only get reflection back to the observer if they are at the proper angle and even then it is a tiny fraction of the light that the source sends out.
A car may have more light than a bike equipped with current LEDs (not overvolted MR16 halogens, however, which put out about the same light as a car light) but that doesn't matter. The light spreads out over distance very rapidly and the lumens per area drops significantly. It drops even more as it travels back to the observer.
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
Yes, yes, yes, Clearly you will believe what you want. Yes the light reflected is less bright than its original source... However, given that the sources are far brighter than ANY bike light, my point is still accurate...
Nope. Not accurate at all.
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
Your so kind! FYI, I did google and couldn't find anything but flash lights at those prices. The cheapest Magic Lights I found were more than twice that price.
"You're", contraction of "you are" as opposed to "your" which is a possessive pronoun. Quite frankly, at this point you are becoming insulting. Why should I help?
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
Cheapskate isn't nescessarily an appropriate description, but by your own admission price is a major component of your decision making on the subject. Well that and your a Tim Allen type.
More insults.
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
Well by a litteral definition of fraction you are correct. After all the sun's output is only a fraction of a candles output.
Really, the sun's output is only a faction of a candle's output? You might want to revise that. But what does that have to do with the price of coal in Newcastle? One third is a fraction.
Originally Posted by
PlanoFuji
Dyno headlights (since all three technologies still used dyno's for power) offer significantly greater light output than the older technology. Your statements otherwise indicate you are simply irrational on the subject.
And yes, no one disagrees that battery lighting can output MORE light than dyno lighting. As you say the reason is based upon physics. battery lighting has far more power available than any dyno system. Again, you and Tim Allen are wrong. More power isn't necessarily better.
Uh huh. Ask just about anyone if they want more light for less money or if they want to spend much more money for less light.