Light lottery

I occasionally satisfy my geek side and my tightarse side by ordering various electronic gadgets and doodads from www.dealextreme.com which is a front end for factories churning out cheap crap from China.  A lot of stuff on there is ridiculously cheap, mostly because it comes directly from the factory, dealextreme just handles the branding and customer service - they don't buy any stock themselves.

3 out of 4 ain't bad

I order iPod accessories, computer bits and pieces and one thing I usually pick up is bike lights.  My experience with the stuff from there has led me to usually buy two of everything.  There is about a 50% chance that most stuff from there won't last longer than a few months of continual use, however it is bloody cheap.  I picked up some knog knockoffs and some skull jolly roger bike lights which come in twin packs, perfect.

Virtually identical

Three out of four aint bad eh?  The knog ripoffs are almost identical to the real thing, I have the real deal in black next to the ripoff which is in white.  They are virtually identical, except there is still dags of silicone left over from the mould in the knockoff (knogoff har har) and it's missing the ridge in the band on the strap.  The internals look identical, down to the cap over the battery and the lens.  The only thing that is missing is the knog branding.

Knogoff on left (white), real one on the right (black)

Missing ridge on the strap

The knockoffs went on my randonneur

The jolly roger on the Raleigh, now it looks like a BADASS FIXIE (not)

All in all, not so bad, total cost was $9.82.  Dealextreme is like the $2 shop of the internet, as long as you know you're buying cheap crap it's all good fun.  I've ordered heaps of bike lights from them over the past few years, none of them are still running after 6 months.  The Ay Ups I bought however, have lasted more than 2 years and are still going strong.  However they cost many many times more.  I guess you get what you pay for.