There certainly is a high tech crowd there that keeps pushing us into the future, but there is also a faction that includes me that prefers the commonly available battery configurations. I like being able to have the ability to swap batteries between radio, GPS, and lights. Generally i have found the conversation on CPF to be fairly civil and informative, verging at times toward impossibly nerdy (a bit like ETS..)

Consumers Union tested different battery types and developed costs per picture for alkalines, lithiums, and rechargeables. Eneloops were by far the cheapest in that application.

What I need now is a good solar panel to feed juice to my battery charger. This would be really handy in a power outage. Any suggestions?