The Vista/Legend lithium issue was due to the higher initial voltage of the lithium chemistry making it think the voltage was too high and the protection routine would shut it down. They corrected that with a later firmware release. Though since switching to the new low self discharge nimh and getting nearly the same run time from them as lithium I haven't used lithium in forever.

There are two types of LCD's, the ones you see in laptops, monitors, tv's etc which are lit from behind and the transreflective which are 'lit' by a reflective strip behind it and the ambient light or a front light. The transreflective are what you find in a watch and are brighter in bright light. It appears that is what they switched to for the Dakotas looking at the pictures, those are not as bright indoors since you can't have a light in front of the display so it has to be off to the side then have some sort of reflector system to direct the light downward through the screen and back out, a fancy polarized panel which isn't as efficient.

I'd like to see how the colorado compares, I'd have bought one if it weren't for the map licensing.