Ps. this is cheapest and crapiest product of Edi-t, and we are talking about Chinese company so it might be heapest and crapiest of the world. If you want good one you need to pay for it.

Hannu

Judie wrote:

Actually, that could probably be arranged if I could get different flashlights together. My daughter is a Venture Scout and they are going on a 10 day Philmont hike this summer. It might be intersting to see what type of results they had with demanding heavy duty usage.

LOL! Considering the demands of Philmont, I’m not sure that she’ll want to carry what may well end up being dead weight along the trails. In fact, my daughter only carried a small MagLight and rarely even needed that.

On the other hand, Philmont is an EXCELLENT ‘test to destruction’ place- you could even run a booth at the Training Center and the adult Scouters there would certainly be happy to play with any such ‘toys’ till they either break or prove themselves, and probably write some great feedbacks.

I was dissapointed too.

One of my squeeze lights out of the box was a bust, however – with just a couple of strong squeezes the pump mechanism snapped. Luckily for me, Eric at Brando helped arrange a replacement.

It might be good to mention that the squeeze-type mechanism can be prone to breaking if squeezed too vigorously, but otherwise, this type of light seems much more reliable than that of the shake-variety.

themog wrote:

Maybe we could give a bunch to a group of overactive cub scouts for a week long camping trip and see how many of them survive the trip intact!

Actually, that could probably be arranged if I could get different flashlights together. My daughter is a Venture Scout and they are going on a 10 day Philmont hike this summer. It might be intersting to see what type of results they had with demanding heavy duty usage.

I have seen other products that have been built along the idea of having no battery before. Usually they are fairly clunky, but durable equipment like some of those hand crank world band radios that are usually only purchased by survivalists or by someone who wants something to throw in to their earthquake/flood/teotwawki emergency kits. The reliable ones also tend to be fairly expensive, at least when compared to a normal battery operated unit.

It has only been recently that I have seen cheap and light weight battery free devices like these shaker flashlights. Since you just had two in a row go bad on you, I really question the long term value from a flashlight like this compared to the risk it might pose. The only thing worse than not having the equipment that you need when something goes wrong would be THINKING that you have reliable equipment with you, and acting on that assumption, then finding out that it is broken when you go to use it.

I am sure that eventually we will see durable and reliable “forever” products like these shaker lights that are both reasonably priced and light weight. But trying to sort the wheat from the chaff might be very hard when you only have a couple of weeks to review the product. I think we need some new standards for testing products like this. Some endurance equivalent of the regular “creak test”. Maybe we could give a bunch to a group of overactive cub scouts for a week long camping trip and see how many of them survive the trip intact!

Let’s please try to stay on topic. If you would like to discuss advertising merits, feel free to email me directly.

Obviously you need some income to keep the-gadgeteer.com going, and since you both have day jobs I am guessing that you don’t have a lot of extra free time to put into the site beyond writing the (most excellent and informative) reviews. Selling advertising is by far the easiest way to do that.

Why don’t you leave the choice of what form of advertising to use up to your readers? Since they are who you will be depending on for your click through per page view rate. Set up a poll that lists every form of advertising that is available to you and link it on the main page. You could even turn this into another useful article since I am sure that most people who have never run a web page have no idea about how web advertising really works, let alone the economics involved.

I myself prefer the path that they took at http://www.penny-arcade.com. Since they hate most web advertising themselves, they were very picky about what they would allow. They went with small (in file size, not footprint) side bar and top bar banner ads that they felt were tasteful (no garish flashing animations) and restricted the content to only products and companies that they felt their audience would be interested in. As a result, they were able to get a much higher than average click through rate and were actually able to charge slightly more than normal per page view.

This is a small part of how (coupled with their astronomical popularity) they were able to turn Penny-Arcade into a viable stand alone business instead of just a really cool side project. I am at least 100 times more likely to click an advertising link from their website than I am from almost any other website. Primarily because the ads don’t aggravate me and they are more likely to be for something I am interested in at the moment.

I am hoping that I can get a review sample, because I love the idea of a shake-powered LED flashlight. :0)

Nice idea, but unreliable on many levels.

-Craig

We are experimenting with the sponsored links, and your input is very valuable. Thank you for the excellent suggestion. :0)

Also, this is the first post in which I noticed the sponsored links (like the one that appeared in my sentence above). I think you should put something at the top of every page that disclaims them. Since you provide this site for free and I appreciate it, I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t have them, but I do think people need to understand that you (and I) are not endorsing whatever they link to. I know there’s a FAQ link in the ad, but most people won’t click on it.

-Craig