I have a lighter weight 1 liter polycarbonate bottle from enviro products. I use it for water while working out. Can't say how many times it's taken a fall onto concrete with little damage other than scratches. Nalgene is standard though and because it fits my MSR mini-works filter it's the one in my kit. They're all pretty tough though.

thank you to all of you for your input - i appreciate it. it's a small issue - the nalgene vs gsi - but i like to gather as much info as possible before i make a purchase of anything - and i've found so much great info on so many different topics here.

it sounds like nalgene will be the bottle to buy. i saw the gsi bottles and thought perhaps i'd give the 'little guy' my business.

all other things being equal, the base of the nalgene is the same size as the rest of the bottle. the base of the gsi appears to be slightly smaller than the rest of the bottle - in my mind making it not quite as stable as the nalgene. a picky point, but i'd like to give my water bottle as much chance as possible to remain standing.

perhaps i'll get one of each.

thanks again to you all.

One thing you might want to consider is bottle weight. IIRC the weights of various 1liter bottles/containers empty are:

Guyot designs steel 1liter ~13 ozs, nalgene std wide mouth
Klean Kanteen steel 40oz ~11 ozs, weird semi-wide mouth
Nalgene polycarbonate ~5 ozs, nalgene std wide
Reused water bottle PETG ~2 ozs, small 28mm mouth
Platypus water bag <2 ozs, small 28mm mouth

That's with no water, 1 liter weighs 1 kg or about 2.2 pounds, so some of these bottles are a significant fraction of the water weight. The nalgenes are pretty bombproof and the stainless ones you can boil water safely in, so you could do without a pot.

Now for day-to-day use i carry a reused water bottle with a spare platypus. For camping, i frequently also take a nalgene, they are bulletproof and are good for mixing gatorade.

An advantage to using narrow mouth bottles is that they couple to this thing:
http://www.aquamira.com/preparedness/frontier-pro-filter-system/
which allows filtering straight from the bottle, or by gravity, so you don't have to carry around a heavy pump and work it streamside.

that's what i like about this forum - another good point raised.

rei sez the nalgene polycarb @ 32 oz / 1 litre weighs 6.2 oz. empty.

nalgene sez the same bottle weighs .33 lbs or 5.28 oz.

the gsi @ 1 litre weighs 7.2 oz. empty.

so 5.28 vs. 7.2..

it does make a difference. thank you for that.

for me, where i typically day hike, i carry 2, 3-litre camelback hydration bladders. yesterday i went through 1 3/4 bags in an 8 hour hike. temps were in the low 70s. and the hike was 95% sun exposed. but we did see water where typically isn't any.

the intent was to try to reduce the water carry - using nalgene/gsi or ??? - to capture the water, steripen (fast, minimal weight) to sterilize, hydration bag to carry the sterilized water. don't mind 6 lbs of water but 12 gets heavy! and some places we go have year-round, even in drought, water.

1 liter mountain dew bottles with the wide mouth. Cheap and REALLY indestructable.

There are concerns that the PET/PETE 1 bottles (which is what most plastic beverage bottles are made of) breaks down much as the polycarb does.

I personally use the PET/PETE 1 bottles for making sports drink from powder (for electrolyte replacement) but then throw them out after a use or two. I like doing it this way because 1) I don't have to risk getting sticky crap in my good water bottles, and 2) I minimize the risk of ingesting chemicals that have leached into the water.

Also with powdered sports drinks, don't leave them in the sun and heat on multiple day trips. Let's just say they get a little "fragrant." All the more reason to use the cheapies for sports drink and save the good ones for water only.

and not polycarbonate.

I usually use the HDPE (translucent white) bottles as my "good" bottles and the cheapie PET/PETE 1 bottles for drink mixes.

I have my dad's old poly carb Nalgene and and a poly carb Nalgene I found out in the mountains, but I don't use them much anymore. I think for short term use, they'd probably be fine, like filtering water into them to carry from a creek back to camp with the water being used that night for drinking, cleaning, hygiene, etc.