Waited until the last second.

[DeltaSierra]

Mag lites. Love them so much. I have a little AAA mini that I got at my Dry Grad party (we had an arcade alley with carnival games like balloon pop, skee ball, etc - I won mine playing the "wishing well") I've had it clipped to my purse for 15 years and it still works as well as the day I won it.

[ladyjaneinmd]

Hmm....these maglights sounds wonderful. Methinks as a single woman living alone, I should get me one. What size would you recommend? Keep in mind that I'm not short, slight, or in any way delicate, so anyone who gets this thing swung at him will be *damaged*.

[taxguykarl]

Because they'd rather spend eleven hundred dollars and 200 hours denying THE MAN(TM) of something than spend five minutes and $20 doing something legitimately.

I've run the numbers on a lot of the tax scammers that cross my path--almost all would be ahead working minimum wage

[LoTech]

Mag lights are nice, but rather expensive for casual (non professional) use. And they don't have the "tactical" notching around the lens and switch that tends to characterize the flashlights geared towards emergency personal defence. Mostly they make good clubs due to the high mass of a set of D-cell batteries and being built heavily enough to survive such abuse. Maglights also made some of the first good, bright flashlights, due to their use of halogen bulbs and focusing mechanism.

The tremendous strides in LED technology have us seeing solid aluminum lights that emit AMAZING amounts of light for much less money.

I find myself facing the wall of flashlights at Menards and contemplating a new light at least once a year. My latest purchase may fit your needs as well: the Guidesman 575-7089. It is a full sized nine inch long aluminium body with a variable focus lens and 'tactical' notches around the rim. It puts out an amazing 1000 lumens (500 lumens on Low) and comes with the necessary nine AA batteries. I paid $19.

I gave my brother one for Christmas and he had so much fun playing with it that his 7-year-old boy was getting jealous. And that was BEFORE it got dark outside!

Don't limit yourself to what Wal-Mart has. Shop around!

[Aria]

I just bought these three tiny LED flashlights... they were Christmas clearance, regular 14.99 on sale for 1.99! They need AAA batteries though. Need to get some and try them out.

[LoTech]

I just bought these three tiny LED flashlights... they were Christmas clearance, regular 14.99 on sale for 1.99! They need AAA batteries though. Need to get some and try them out.

Yeah, I got tired of fiddling with those three-AAA flashlights. It seemed like one of the batteries would shift at random and make the light go dim or out. Plus AAA batteries seem to cost more than AA do, for some reason.

I spotted a two-pack for $4 of aluminum mini led flashlights that only need one-AA to put out 30 lumens. Tiny enough that I just leave one in my zippered coat pocket, just in case. Bright enough to read by or search for your keys that you dropped in the bushes.

[Ben_Who]

Ahem,

BACKED over it.

In a loaded tow truck


Did more damage to the parking lot than the flashlight

"Goddammit, Sam, fetch the crowbar! Damn Maglite's got itself embedded again!"

[Argabarga]

It also spent a few hours submerged in a storm sewer drain before I managed to fish it back out (fell out of the cab, rolled downhill, into gutter, and then into drain) none the worse for the wear that way, either.

[Racket_Man]

As one who has owned several Mag lights I LOVE those things. Durable a heck and weighty enough for certain "uses" especially the 3 D cell models

The only downside I have found is that the LED bulbs tend to not be as bright as a regular incandesiant bulb at distances of say over 20 - 30 feet. The old style bulb is just brighter at those distances for some reason. I tested this one night at work. I installed an LED bulb in my light and shined it on a tree say about 20 yards away. I then installed a regular incandesant bulb in the same light and was able to see more of the tree with that bulb.

I deal with distances looking for addresses.

[bunrotha]

... a pocket sized 2xAA version for ... nearly 30 years, and it's still using one of the bulbs it was packaged with. That saw me through 3 years of military cadet activities, a year & a bit of actual service, and 25+ years rattling around in bags & gloveboxes. It's not as intimidating, but it's easier to hold in your mouth when changing a tyre - or it can free stand as a decent candle too!

Ah, mouth-mounted I-need-both-hands-free lighting, ideal for that. I worked backstage in theatres for a while, and the 2xAA cell maglite was standard equipment, along with several yards of PVC tape round the grip so you didn't chip teeth on aluminium. Oh, and a safety chain, because dropping anything from the lighting grid was a hanging offence.

I still have mine, because it's a pretty blue colour so I know when people "borrow" it. It lives in the fusebox cupboard, and the Argabarga-grade 3xD cell LED photon cannon / club lives in the car trunk. D-cell one is over 10 years old and the AA-cell one over 20, still going strong.

[Argabarga]

They now make those mini-led ones so they can clip onto the brim of a ball cap, most of our drivers have one for doing paperwork and roadside stuff in the dark, very helpful.

Although it does make you look like a futuristic coal miner

[Seanette]

DH has a baseball style cap with LEDs mounted under the brim to effectively serve him as headlights. He loves it.

[Kogarashi]

Those cap-mounted ones sound nice.

I liked our D-cell Maglite while we had it, but it did have the problem of getting dim too fast. I'm not sure why. My mom had one just like it that lasted much longer.

Now we've got a Defiant brand one about the same size (3 D-cells or so), though given the heft and the design of it, I suspect it's one of the self-defense ones LoTech mentioned. I don't know where it came from, though, as it was a Christmas gift one year from my parents. It's super-bright which is very nice when walking the girls to the bus stop at o'dark thirty.

I do seem to recall that if you find yourself in need of using one of those hefty flashlights in self-defense, you should hold it by the light end because it swings better that way and is less likely to break your flashlight.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I find myself facing the wall of flashlights at Menards and contemplating a new light at least once a year. My latest purchase may fit your needs as well: the Guidesman 575-7089. It is a full sized nine inch long aluminium body with a variable focus lens and 'tactical' notches around the rim. It puts out an amazing 1000 lumens (500 lumens on Low) and comes with the necessary nine AA batteries. I paid $19.

I gave my brother one for Christmas and he had so much fun playing with it that his 7-year-old boy was getting jealous. And that was BEFORE it got dark outside!

Menards you say?

I may just have to check that out when I get paid.

[LoTech]

The only downside I have found is that the LED bulbs tend to not be as bright as a regular incandesiant bulb at distances of say over 20 - 30 feet. The old style bulb is just brighter at those distances for some reason. I tested this one night at work. I installed an LED bulb in my light and shined it on a tree say about 20 yards away. I then installed a regular incandesant bulb in the same light and was able to see more of the tree with that bulb..

Don't confuse a retrofit LED "bulb" with a light actually designed around an LED emitter. Especially in the case of a MagLight or other variable focus light.

Incandescent bulbs shine in all directions, including backwards past the edges of the socket, so the reflector in an incandescent flashlight focuses on the point within the bulb where the filament would be, some distance ABOVE the socket and in front of the reflector.

An LED emitter is s flat slab of silicon: it can't shine backwards through itself, so a flashlight designed around an LED has a reflector that is much deeper and narrower, with a focus on the surface of the LED, recessed into the reflector.

The different geometry of the reflectors means that sticking an LED "bulb" into an older incandescent flashlight doesn't work as well as one that came with an LED to begin with.

Assuming it was designed around an LED, that is. I've seen some cheap plastic ones that were pretty obviously pre-LED designs with an LED just grafted in quick-and-dirty to save money on design costs. That didn't work too well.