It looks like Magic Shine lights for a lot more money.
I have the Magic Shine and love them, one for the helmet and one on the bar.

You should probably contact Mountain Bike Forums - seems to be the best place for light evaluation through their light shootout:

http://reviews.mtbr.com/blog/category/lights-shootout/

I think cat eye came out with one this year.

http://www.cateye.com/en/product_detail/598

Cool light... has a standard battery back up.

Try Googling "solar bike light" I stopped looking at them after seeing three different ones. There is one that I saw five years ago too. Nothing new.

..

Thought I'd throw in this one if you have a "money is no object" criterion:

http://www.king-cart.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi

Your link doesn't work.

Sorry. Try this:

http://elektrolumens.com/Kong/Kong-12.html

My Jet Lite A-51 just arrived (700 lumen, bomb proof, $199). Very high quality build. It will be my lifesaver for long, down the mountain commute at night.

What I want to stress is that the the customer service was over the top today. I had questions that weren't answered in the instructions, emailed the company yesterday, and the owner, David Joseph, wrote back and said to call him! I did and we had a very "illuminating" conversation about the light. He also added that they will be updating the instructions, dialing them in with the arrival of new products this spring.

I need an inexpensive tail light that I can mount on my rear rack... My old mount was on the seat tube(5 LED light, great visibility even though it was mounted behind the seat stays) and won't be visible with my new rack setup. Are there any that have bolt in mounts that could fit on a reflector mount point? That would be most handy.

A couple of things to keep in mind...depending on the rack you own, there are some better and not so better solutions.

Reflector Mount Bolts - if you have basic reflector mounts then I would say try to find one of the older CatEye Reflex or TL-LD500 taillights. They are the only one that are a real reflector and also pretty good flashing lights. I like the idea of a passive ( real reflector ) aspect of the light.

The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the rack companies are moving towards a mounting system that is standard in Europe. This has a two bolt mount that fits horizontally on the rack. I know some light companies are also making mounts for their lights that fit this new rack system.

I use a new version of the Reflex with this...http://www.cateye.com/store/parts.php?cid=3_30

I wish all this would be standard and we would not need to have adaptors!

I have never been happier than with my FlashBak rear light. I ride an Xtracycle, and I clip it on the back. The remote power switch blinks with the lights, so I always KNOW when my back lights are working. Very cool. Amber in color, cuts thru darkness or fog much better. 4 Metal clips hold that sucker on...I've lost a lot of little red blinkies, because of the dumb little plastic clips. No more.

For a modern / current taillight with a reflector, what about the Portland Designs Radbot 1000?
Comes with rack mount as well as two other mounts. Gets great reviews, and brighter than the PB Superflash. I may put down some money for one, as my Trice OEM rack has the standard Euro mount points as well as a few other options.

For an affordable steady rear light, about the best I have found is a red 200+ lumen LED Ultrafire flashlight with one of the better DealExtreme bike mounts. I've got mine mounted to a rear crossbar on my rack at the moment, but had it on the seat back before.
The flashlight is solid aluminum 'tactical' style, the bike mount is plastic, but for $12 for the entire package shipped to my home, that is pretty much a bargain.
Batteries are extra, but that goes for most of them.

As for knowing whether it is on or off, not a problem at night, it lights up the road behind me, easily visible in the rearview mirror. Street signs are visible for 100s of yards.

I use a blinky for backup and long battery life, and the Ultrafire to wake up the motorists.

"For a modern / current taillight with a reflector, what about the Portland Designs Radbot 1000?"

I am kind of a stickler on this point about "reflector". I don't own a Portland Design Dadbot but I might just go out and get one and test the "reflective" part of the light.

It appears clearly this design does have more of a REAL reflector than the Super Flash that has some fancy diamond molding that provide NO reflective capabilities.

The reflector does work. It's much better than the other tail light reflectors, but not quite as bright as a bike reflector. The Radbot also has a better wider beam than the Super flash.

2manybikes - exactly my point about "tail light reflectors". In fact most have little or no reflective capability and are just molded design features that give unsuspecting buyers the impression they are getting some reflectivity when they are not. I am not sure how the PD Radbot measures against required bike reflectors but I know the old Cat Eye Reflex and new Auto lights are supposed to be full on bike reflectors. I just wish the new Auto ones had the same mounting on the back that the original did.

The reflector on the Radbot 1000 meets EU standards, so it's not simply a rubbish piece of plastic. Mine works just fine as a reflector. That being said, the light far outshines the reflector, making it rather useless while the light is on.

Wayne sells great lights but the KONG is huge and not practical for use on a bike.. The EDC-mce or EDC-XML are a better choice for bike riding.

http://elektrolumens.com/EDC-XML/EDC-XML.html

If you are looking at a free or cheap Office suite, you should be aware that SUN was bought by Oracle, and that OpenOffice development is now controlled by Oracle.

Most of the developers have left and forked OpenOffice to create a new codebase, LibreOffice (Free or Liberty office).
One comparison: http://www.infoworld.com/d/applicati...e-716?page=0,2

LibreOffice is now what is being shipped as standard by some of the major Linux distributions in place of OpenOffice, and already the shipping version has some improvements over the new OO version.

General feeling in the open source community is that LibreOffice will improve at a faster rate in future than OO.

You can download LbreOffice from http://www.libreoffice.org/ at no cost.

Either one of them are a good choice, and work very similarly.

As for the StarOffice variant of OpenOffice, I've never bothered with it. Oracle now provides paid support at various levels for OpenOffice, so I would suspect that StarOffice will go away given that Oracle owns SUN.

I agree the reflective portion on the Redbot 1000 is not useful when the light is on. The reason I like taillights that have them are in case your batteries die on you and ... like me... you've taken off all the reflectors. If you look at sites like this...

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/wcm/ro...r_vehicles.htm

It would appear that ANY white "reflector" for the front and red "reflector" for the rear would pass. I am not aware of any EU standard but rather standards that are country by country. Apparently this is why there are two bolt patterns on rear racks that we get in the US. They are for two different standards.

How is it that you know the Radbot meets an EU standard?

It's mentioned on their website.

http://www.bike-eu.com/public/file/a...tandards_en_14
764_english-draft.pdf#search='EN14764

Check Page 76. 4.20.1.

So I don't know what standard they are referring to. I know it has reflective capabilities...just not sure how much.

I'll pass, thanks. There really isn't a reason to get into a pedantic discussion about bike reflectors. It's a good light with a decent reflector, and that's good enough for me.

I bought a pair of Wal Mart specials--then I bought a Niterider minewt 350--now there's a real light. Very pleased with it.

I did a side-by-side comparison test between a MagLite Magnum Star Xenon flashlight rated for 122.2 lumens with four D-cell alkaline batteries, a Rayovac Roughneck Flex360 LED flashlight rated for 130 lumens with three AA-size alkaline batteries, and a Streamlight Buckmaster LED Tactical flashlight with the new C4 LEDs rated for 180 lumens with two 3V CR123A lithium batteries (camera batteries). In spot focus applications, which is what the vast majority of flashlights are used for, the MagLite Magnum Star Xenon very easily out-threw both LED flashlights in terms of beam intensity. The battle was no contest, the MagLite flashlight remains unmatched. In flood-lamp-type applications, such as when using the flashlight for a guide light, the C4 LED in the Streamlight Buckmaster Tactical Flashlight was by far the winner.

The other big advantage to a four-D-cell maglite flashlight is in an emergency, the flashlight can be used as a baton to aid in self defense. My cousin is a veterinarian and she says if you're riding a bike and a dog starts chasing you, hitting the dog with a shot of pepper spray is only going to make the dog more aggressive. She says in such situations, your best line of defense is something to distract the dog or at least hit it in the nose or jaw to get it to release its grip on you, and a MagLite Flashlight with four D-Cell batteries has enough weight behind it to cause death by blunt-force trauma, and the MagLite casing is so durable it can withstand being run over by a tank.

If you really want to know what flashlights are the best at night, ask the people who have to use flashlights as part of their jobs...Police officers, firefighters, soldiers, electricians...They'll all tell you the same thing: Nothing beats a MagLite.

Edit: The Tiabolo ACE-G flashlight has the best corona and range in its class (tactical flashlights), and so is by far the best choice for bicyclists, but it does not come cheap, with an asking price of just under $105 which gets you a 700-lumen CREE MC-E LED bulb. The Fenix TK11 LED flashlight doesn't even compare to the Tiabolo ACE-G, while the StreamLight Buckmaster C4 LED flashlights will match any flashlight under $100 in beam intensity.

If you don't care about price or battery runtime, then the flashlight that will blow all the others away is the Xtar D30 Howitzer II, which boasts 3 MC-E CREE LEDs and a rated light output of 1700 lumens, truly a Night Sun, but the asking price for that bad boy is $250.

The Rayovac Roughneck Flex360's main advantage is it boasts a clamp, magnet, and directional flashlight head that can pivot 90 degrees and rotate 180 degrees for true hands-free light. It is a utility flashlight first and foremost but is useful for bicyclists because you can use the clamp or magnet to have it anywhere on the bicycle frame and adjust the head to aim the light anywhere you need to. Runtime on High (130 lumens) is 12 hours on 3 AA-size alkaline batteries and its maximum beam range is 450 feet in spot mode, with spot mode boasting a corona the size of a basketball at 450 feet. In Flood mode, the beam's maximum line-of-sight range is 50 feet but the corona is 15 feet in diameter.

Honestly, though, brighter light isn't always better if you're riding in areas with no street lights (my eyes adjust so well for moonless nights in areas with no street lights that I can navigate around without the aid of a flashlight; in fact, I see better at night in situations where the ambient light level is virtually nil). In what I call "perfect darkness", which is as black as night can get, then once my eyes adjust, which they do to the point where I can see white areas clearly, then I only need a 30-lumen LED lamp to be able to see perfectly.

I've read a lot here about eneloop rechargeable batteries. What I would like to know is their voltage output. Is it 1.2V or 1.5V? Fell into this trap years ago trying to save money on batteries only to realise the rechargeables of the day were only 1.2V, and the device needed 8 batteries. When doing the math 1.2X8=9.6V, with a standard batteries 1.5X8=12V, my son's new christmas train would only work when the cars were removed and the engine ran solo, this was not an option. If this standard still holds true then the lights output will be reduced by an average of 20% when using a rechargeable. Or increased by 25% if changing to a non-rechargeable. Food for thought.

I haven't researched rechargeables in quite sometime but I believe this still to be true by the fact all rechargeable handtools are sold in multiples of 1.2.

Edit: OK, just checked the internet and found the eneloop's output to be 1.2 volts, this is unacceptable for use in a standard flashlight in my opinion. If the light was designed by the manufacturer to run with this reduced voltage in mind then OK, but otherwise I'll stick with the tried and true alkaline and the undiminished light output.

Alkaline voltage sags quickly under load; you'll find that you'll get far longer runtimes with an Eneloop that with Alkalines in a modern LED light. In fact most runtime tests on hobbyist sites are done with Eneloops, not Alkaline batteries. In the real world under heavy loads Eneloops beat Alkalines every time.

EDIT: Here you can find some reviews of AA lights using Eneloops. Included are lux and lumen numbers. http://www.light-reviews.com/reviews_aa.html

Checked the site you listed, means absolutely nothing without a comparison to alkalines. As for sagging under load, if the light as I mentioned is designed with alkalines in mind and the higher voltage they supply then it WILL be brighter as I stated. If the light has circuitry to correct for voltage then it won't matter as far as light ouput, but it will matter in the device's lifespan.

I guess I should also add, I have a single LED flashlight as a backup in my toolbox just in case my maglight dies. It still has the 2 original alkaline AA's I installed 10yrs ago and works like a champ. Just in case you are wondering, I would guess the total hrs of run time so far to be between 10 and 20.

Then check out Candle Power Forums for more info. Modern LED lights do better with Eneloops than with alkalines. Freshly charged Eneloops are around 1.45v.

Which light are you speaking of?

EDIT: Here are some runtime/output graphics that illustrate what I've been saying. The light is a Fenix LD2 CE. As you can see with rechargeable AA batteries the light is just as bright as with alkalines, but the alkalines die very quickly. This test was done with Duracell 2650mAh Ni-MH, not Eneloops, but their voltage is the same. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...runtime-graphs

http://lights.chevrofreak.com/runtim...%20-%20max.png

http://lights.chevrofreak.com/runtim...20-%20high.png

http://lights.chevrofreak.com/runtim...-%20medium.png