Just to clarify things, it's not that I'm unhappy with the Lucky Duck laser- it's a terrifically bright laser and well worth the money. Any "buyer's remorse" on my part is just due to the fact that it was not an improvement on what I already had. But it did settle some questions I had on laser power ratings and visibilty, as well as industry practices, in any event. The Beta pointer was advertised as an "optimized" 5mw laser and was my first green laser pointer. So while it appeared much brighter than other green lasers I had seen at star-parties, in my mind it was just a good 5mw unit- I had not had a chance to compare it side-by-side with other lasers. The laser I bought from ComputerGeeks.com sometime later was much more like the typical star-party laser I had seen in the past, so I assumed it was a "non-optimized" 5mw diode actually closer to 3mw. When the Lucky Duck arrived and it was about the same, or even slightly dimmer than the Beta, I thought I smelled a rat. Fortunately I was wrong about the Lucky Duck being over-rated. Actually the Beta was under-rated, as my light-meter test proved. Noah Acres' explanation makes sense: The Lucky Duck 20mw units were actually "5mw" units that tested much higher out of given batches, and the Beta pointer was likely a similar case. So I got lucky right from the start, and I'm afraid that I was spoiled, thanks to the excellent Beta product. It had big shoes to fill. But as I said, it doesn't diminish the Lucky Duck at all, which actually cost less money. No matter what laser you own, try freshly-charged NiMH batteries and I think you'll gain a bit more visibility. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.