>>>After seeing the incredible amounts of analysis paralysis the OP goes through on this site with making minor decisions I wonder what it's like for him to make a major decision like buying a house. Or is this thread a thinly veiled ploy to get some of the members here to send him some of our old lights to force the issue on him and eliminate the whole purchasing process?
<<<<<
I like
that idea. What've you got for me?
Funny comment about the house, but it misses my point. The frustration for me comes from there being so many choices out there and so many of these choices being virtually identical. Why do two dozen manufacturers have to put out the same exact Chinese light under two dozen different names? It was nowhere NEAR this difficult to make "minor decisions" in the past because there was so much less information and so many fewer choices out there.
Anyway, read my final comment below before you walk away from this thread.
>>>>I always thought this was the guy who bought a $5 tail light. Is that thing still running?? <<<<
It's a 32-LED flashlight that I used as a headlight, not a tail light. I replaced it with my old 10W NiteRider lamp for about a week after I spent $30 rebuilding the old battery pack. It's not that the $5 Harbor Freight light had fried, but because I had a sentimental moment and wanted to revive my first headlight. I also like the mounting system on the NiteRider better than the plumbing clamp I used on my Harbor Freight light. Anyway, after one or two recharges, the new battery pack died and I am back to my $5 HF flashlight, which has now served me spectacularly well for, what, two years???? Thanks for asking.
FINAL COMMENTS: So I've ordered the Cygolite HotShot 150 and a rack mount kit from Amazon. Today, I had an hour to kill, so I decided to go into REI to see if they had a 150 I could check out in person. They only had the HotShot
50, but it turns out they had just about every
other blinkie you guys (and the folks over at the Electronics & Lighting Forum) recommended and they were all charged and available to test. As many of you said, every single one of them was absolutely sufficient for my purpose. In fact, the HotShot 50 seemed to be almost TOO BRIGHT. Now I wonder if I made a mistake with the 150. I probably could have spent $20 less and solved my problem without all the agida.
Anyway, hashing it out on this forum kept me busy on all those chilly, dark autumn nights when I was beginning to get depressed about cycle-commuting season coming to an end, so thanks for all the input - and especially the jabs and pokes that finally got me to make a decision and move on.