http://www.arcflashlight.com/arc-aaa.htm

It doesn't get any smaller than this unless you go w/ photon.

Great to hear, Matt. Combine this light with the now commonly available Lithium AAA cells and you have a fine EDC light.

Matt, no doubt a quality light but rather pricey at $46 (incl. S&H). I have a couple of Garrity key ring LED's which I got at WalMart. They are well made coin cell lights measuring 2 3/8 long by 1 wide by 1/4 thick. (Imagine the thickness of two sticks of chewing gum but shorter). Momentary on switch is a little stiff on some. You can test it thru the packaging before you select one. Cost with tax: less than four dollars. It is blindingly (?) bright and never seems to diminish. The battery is replaceable if you have a small enough Phillips to remove the six screws holding it together. I'm talking TINY! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I've managed to kill a couple coin cell lights and my wife as well. The last one we bought was a princeton tech with fell apart in her purse, so spending $5-20 every couple years plus expensive coin cell batteries adds up to the price of the $29.99 Arc AAA in a very short time. I've standardized on AA and AAA in all my gear now and avoid anything with those coin cells, the cells just don't last more than a few months.

Mine got delivered Thursday.
Unfortunately, they delivered it to my billing address, 2 hours away. (Moved recently).
Oh well, I can play with it next week or so.
Still have my LSH-P, and the 2AA body with Kroll clickie, and the belt sheath.
Glad to have Arc back in the game.

I've had a Princeton Tech Pulsar II for years. It's currently in my PSK - I just fished it out and it worked fine. I don't EDC it any more because I found the switch could lock on and run the battery down, but that's a fault of that particular model, not coin lights in general.

For EDC I now have a Photon Freedom. This has a better design - much less likely to stay on unnoticed. I usually put it into signal mode, but I'm currently experimenting with leaving it in the default mode because it is so hard to switch on accidently. I can't remember how long I've had it, many months if not over a year, and it shows no sign of falling apart or going flat.

If coin lights in general are as poor as you suggest, I doubt Doug would recommend one here .

So they're shipping now... great.. time to place my order I guess.

Eugene,
I wasn't putting the Arc light down, just pointing out an inexpensive alternative. The Garrity light I described is a quality, well made light AFAICT. Come battery replacement time, it is a question of do I replace the battery or just replace the light.
Sorry to hear about your wife. What did she do to have to pay the ultimate sacrifice? <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Yes I understand that the cost of cheaper led is attractive and for 1 arc aaa you can have 10 of the other light but...

arc aaa is better built with easier to find batteries. does it justify the cost? maybe for some... just like you can buy a sebenza for $300 or a spyderco for $50. the choice is yours and I happen to like arc products.

The thing is that old arc company came up with some really great lights that were trully inovative and way ahead of time. They went down under due to financial problems. To see them back in action makes me happy since there will be some great products comming out.

What I was meaning is that by the time you have went though 4-5 cheaper ones you might just well buy one good one. Same with tools, I went through a couple sets of cheap srenches and sockets before buying better ones. Tore up a couple front wheel drive cars before spending a bit more on a truck so it would last several years longer. My inlaws buy cheaper stuff all the time and replace their cheap stuff 3-4 times while I keep and use the same thing for many years longer and in the long run save because I paid only once.