Yes, that tendency bothers me as well. If you want to buy that kind of stuff that is powered by commodity batteries, you are really limited. Some recent stuff

Yes, that tendency bothers me as well. If you want to buy that kind of stuff that is powered by commodity batteries, you are really limited. Some recent stuff you should be able to buy easily (though they are powered by AAA betteries, actually): iriver T60SE mp3 player http://www.iriver.com/product/view.asp?pCode=001&pNo=73 http://www.iriver.com/product/view.asp?pCode=001&pNo=73 WikiReader http://thewikireader.com/store/ http://thewikireader.com/store/ but, alas, those are few and I feel like these things go against the general direction of technological progress.