To tell the truth my overall preference is a small ferrocerium rod the exact size of the ones that come glued to the Doans magnesium starter blocks. I knock off the rods and toss the magnesium block in the trash. I just bought a couple large ferro rods in the form of the metal match and some extra large ones in the form of firesteel and they are awesome firestarters but too big to be practical for my purposes, so I prefer the small ones that I rip off of the magnesium bar firestarters. For the amount of work it takes to to actually scrape a decent amount of magnesium in to something that vaguely resembles a neat little pile, I can make ten times as much effective tinder out of almost anything else, grass, leaves, denim, cotton clothing, various componants in a first aid kit and the list goes on. Before I perfected my tinder preparation skills I was all about the magnesium since (just as you pointed out) it is tinder and striker/sparker in one neat little package. Those days however, are gone for me now that my tinder preparation skills have improved. This is not to completely discount the sparklite though. Where the spraklite earns it's keep is when one-handed operation is required. I have been practicing with a small ferro rod one-handed and although it is possible, it sure aint nothin like simply flicking a sparklite. If you look at my videos in a recent thread you can see that with a little practice at preparing tinder you can light almost anything with a sparklitethat you can with the full-sized ferro rods.. and yes all that tinder in the videos can be prepared one-handed. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />