Are we all suffers from information fatigue?

[LA OZ]

As there are so many new torches that are coming out and there are so many good torches dumped in fear of depreciation. I am just getting too tired to think and decide what action to take at this current environment. I used to log into this forum many times per day and I have found that it is not the case anymore. How many of you have the same experience?

 

[VidPro]

Solution:
wait till its sold at wallmart for 2$.

 

[LA OZ]

Solution:
wait till its sold at wallmart for 2$.

Please PM me when this came true.

 

[NotEnoughLight]

Or if you are too impatient to wait, look for one of your existing flashlights and give it a nice Cree/Seoul touch to breathe new life into it. Then there would be no worries about which light to pick. Just which LED to use. Cuts down the options quite dramatically, don't you think?

 

[Flying Turtle]

It's certainly tougher to decide than it once was, but I'm not complaining. I think the greater number of choices is good for all, giving us better lights at better prices.

Geoff

 

[Spydie]

It definatley can be an exercise to read all the reviews done on lights, cross-reference them via price point to online sellers, scour the threads to see if the lights that make your cut are available locally, and then repeat this process for every new product that catches your fancy.

Now, try doing this for lights AND knives at the same time....

 

[Flash-addict]

Ever since I've found cpf, I've saved a ton of money and acheived outstanding runtimes with exellent quality lights:rock: . So, I'lll keep eating all the info I can.

 

[Derek Dean]

I can sympathize with your overloaded senses LA OZ. I get the same thing from the nightly new sometimes, and when I do, I find that shutting off the tube for a week or so seems to help restore my sense of balance.

 

[TORCH_BOY]

Every time I log on, there is a new Flashlight, better than no new Flashlights at all

 

[flashy bazook]

well, you are right, there is a heck of a lot of info floating around here. You can use a few strategies to help you out:

• use the forums for more than just collecting technical info on flashlights. There are interesting people here with neat stories to tell, so you can enjoy those. This will break the monotony of the endless info stuff, and is fun for its own sake anyway.
• narrow down what you pay attention to. Make some "design" choices in effect about which flashlights are worth your time.
• Cut down for example by price. If you think you don't really want to be spending more than $50 bucks for a flashlight, basically just ignore all Surefire and HDS threads after that, that will cut down on info glut quite a bit.
• Choose between LEDs (the obvious choice) and incans. If you eliminate incans, you get rid of whole sub-threads that way.
• Focus on the latest technology - in this case, the CREE and SSC LED's. This will narrow the flashlights you follow to both the latest and greatest, and will again eliminate whole threads (nothing on INOVA, for example, until they start using the new LED's, which won't happen for at least 1 more year - till 2008 at the earliest).
• Decide if you are interested in mods - if not, this will eliminate a ton of more threads simplifying your life. I think this is a bit too drastic myself, (the other steps above are all recommended for simplification purposes!), but say if you stick to a few established modders then you can both keep an eye out on new developments AND not go nuts by tracking down everyting in this area.
• By the way, also eliminate old tech and mediocre old tech (e.g., if you decide not to bother with Maglite LEDs, and mods to that effect, this is another huge area of time savings - unless of course you have Maglites you WANT to mod!).

interested in strategies others follow by the way to manage the info glut on this forum.

 

[flashy bazook]

oh, one more thought: organize your life (as it relates to flashlights, that is!) so it mirrors what you are following here.

If you decide to not pay attention to Maglites and their mods, for instance, sell or give away any you might have at home. The same for Inovas,... (depending on your decisions, of course).

That way the time you spend here is also a lot more efficient in terms of helping you with your home/outdoors/whatever life, since you are reading about stuff that matters to you - and you are not tempted to be reading threads that you decided not to!

 

[leukos]

I'm having a great time actually. The cree craze has caused a lot of CPF'ers to put their incandescent lights and lamps on B/S/T for cheap. I have been enjoying the deals!
I'm also quite excited about the new lamps being produced from Lumens Factory. Four years ago this would have been all the rage of CPF, but it is overshadowed by recent improvements in LEDs.

 

[flashy bazook]

I'm having a great time actually. The cree craze has caused a lot of CPF'ers to put their incandescent lights and lamps on B/S/T for cheap. I have been enjoying the deals!

I'm also quite excited about the new lamps being produced from Lumens Factory. Four years ago this would have been all the rage of CPF, but it is overshadowed by recent improvements in LEDs.

leukos,

good man! and good points, too.

maybe that explains why certain posters with a supposed incan preference have been giving me a hard time? Maybe they are trying to sell the incans and that's why they are saying how great they are! :laughing:

 

[flashfan]

I have to admit that I'm totally overwhelmed by the new lights, technology and accessories.

I remember the "good ol' days" when I felt I had a pretty good handle on most of the "notable" lights out there, and eagerly awaited new developments. These days, I don't even bother--it would take too much time to keep up with it all.

There are so many new manufacturers, not to mention the numerous modders. Can any CPF member actually name/explain all of the "significant" lights(incl. mods)/accessories on the market today?

 

[flashy bazook]

well, the most "notable" development are the new LEDs. The CREE XR-E is about twice as efficient as earlier Luxeons; the SSC P4 maybe almost as efficient, has a nicer (or at least rounder) beam. the XRE's have been a bit more powerful.

So far, Fenix has been the most aggressive in incorporating the new LEDs, with the P1D CE in a 1xCR123A formfactor and the L1D and L2D CE's in 1x, and 2xAA formfactors. These have plenty of useful modes (from low to med to hi to highest) and beat almost anything out there in terms of lumen output/runtime tradeoffs.

Lumapower has come out with the M1 a powerful throw 2xCR123A formfactor with a CREE. Similar lights are just out by Huntlight. There are some big fans of the HDS around here, but HDS was bought by Novatac and it has said it will come out with a great new updated light but we haven't seen anything yet. For big throw in a 1xCR123A formfactor there already is the Lumapower LP mini.

In the SSC P4 you can find the LUmapower F1 already out.
The Inova's tactical (Tx) lights have just been updated but only to a K2 luxeon, so they suffer in the runtime/output department. They also have a new line out, the bolts, but not sure that they are really worth much attention.

Surefire has announced some of their LED lights will get either the CREEs or the SSC's (L1, L2, one other) - you can find details in their new 2007 catalog which is must made available on their website and can be downloaded (no need to wait for snail mail). So they benefit from increased runtime mainly (SF seems to have chosen mainly runtime rather than higher output from the new LED's). SF disadvantages - price is always one, of course, but also that the new CREE lights are said to be several months away from being actually available for purchase - the ones I mentioned above are already out (I own most of them already!).

Streamlight, Pelican, not so much in the new LED's yet, the new Streamlight Survivor LED is interesting because of the formfactor but uses a Lux-III. Tektite remains behind the times with uncompetitive offerings (meaning weight vs output vs runtime, not formfactor which remains strong for divers).

There are new flashlights out also from cheaper, not really well known Chinese manufacturers starting to use the new CREE's, the best way to track them down is to read x2x3x2's reviews in his new website, he tracks down and provides info (with runtime/output measurements planned soon) on these - there are threads started by him in the LED forum so you can find them there. Some he recommends and are quite powerful in terms of lumen output while being also cheap (e.g., less than $30) - you have to be careful that some only use rechargeables (cannot use primaries) which could be a consideration for you.

For mods, the McGizmo offerings have the new LEDs (but are very expensive, $440 per for very small EDC's in titanium). Elektrolumens continues to provide modded lights using CREEs as well, and also in multi-LED formfactors for bigger outputs.

Finally, there is a thread (sticky thread, at the beginning of the LED forum) which tracks which lights have the new CREEs in them.

So, there, one post, summarizes many weeks/months of research!

 

[abvidledUK]

Excel is my greatest ally in keeping all this information (at least all that I am interested in) together, with regards to torches, outputs, RT's, costs etc, even including photo's.

Many different types of spreadsheet, serving different purposes.

I also use the "Print to PDF" facility on my Apple iMac, to keep interesting web pages, CPF or otherwise, together in a folder.

It's a good hobby, not too expensive, and keeps the old brain cells ticking over.

Information fatigue & overload I welcome.

I get round this by re-reading items of interest, quite often finding snippets I missed the first time around.

And again, like in my school exams, I choose to completely ignore some information so as not to overload too much.

 

[flashy bazook]

abvidledUK,

I think we are on the same page, I also use a spreadsheet to track important info., I have it open most of the time so if I see something new (such as new data from an updated review of a flashlight I track) I just add the data in.

where it gets difficult is this threading structure - for sure it is necessary to organize the info, but I find I keep going back and forth and unintentionally reread stuff I've already read because the thread is bumped up for some reason.

plus new (but similar to older) threads keep coming up.

so there are difficulties to deal with, and the search engines just don't cut it very well, they make the problem of reading the same stuff over and over more difficult.

 

[aml]

Im loving it...all this SSC/CREE craziness going around...i picked up 3 pentagonlights off the BST forum for DIRT cheap! and one of them went off to milky...(to see what all this SSC talk is about)