I'm sure you usually only visit DealExtreme (previously) for their delightfully wide range of prophylactics, but they now also stock the "Spotlight" cigarette-lighter-charged flashlight that I reviewed a little while ago.
It's yours for $US18.80 including delivery to anywhere, PayPal only. The standard price is $US14.95 ex delivery, so unless you've got a bricks-and-mortar shop nearby that stocks it, the DX option is very likely to be cheaper, for people outside the USA at least.
(The two vendors I originally mentioned in my review are JTSpotlight and 12VSpotlight.)
If you're outside the USA you'll probably get the light about as fast from DealExtreme as you would from anybody else, too. DealExtreme usually take a while to deliver stuff (I've not yet received my tiny plastic Buddha, for instance), but that's because they're drop-shipping, just telling the Chinese factory that makes whatever you've bought to send it to you. With perhaps some minimal amount of cobbling-together of orders on the actual DealExtreme premises as well, just to add a few more days to proceedings.
Drop-shipping means you get to wait however long each factory takes to get stuff packed and posted. But DX is presumably selling Spotlights direct from the manufacturer, too, and I think the Spotlight makers don't also make a wide range of three-dollar Chinese oddities, so they ought to respond faster.
(If you order a Spotlight and it arrives seven months later, packaged between two Zebu cowpats that're held together with a strand of barbed wire, I accept no responsibility. But do feel free to vent in the comments.)
UPDATE: As reader Changes points out in the comments, DX now also have a brandless "OEM" version of the Spotlight, for a princely $US8.50 delivered.
8 February 2009 at 8:38 am
Good lights up to a point. I bought a couple when I was in the States last year. Big problem however. They don't fit a standard lighter/power socket in Australia. They're made for a narrower socket. Suggestions on how to get these to charge in Australian welcome.
8 February 2009 at 11:05 am
Try an adapter. There are many meant to run two or three gadgets from one socket. Try fitting your light in before buying them; if it fits right it's a safe bet it'll charge just fine from one.
If all else fails, grab a lighter receptacle plug and McGyver yourself a charging dock.
8 February 2009 at 12:07 pm
As I said in the review, the Spotlight worked fine in my car, and I've since tried it in another, and it's fine there too. (And I'm in Australia, of course.)
I'm sure there are some sockets in which it won't work, because of the difference between a "normal" sprung lighter plug and the solid contacts on the Spotlight, but I doubt the country you live in has much to do with the size of car lighter sockets.
10 February 2009 at 6:25 am
DX now have this. I'd say it's the same thing as a Spotlight only with no brand, if it wasn't for its lighter weight. Methinks the battery is smaller (I don't think there's much else that can be decreased in weight in the original Spotlight).
10 February 2009 at 9:32 am
Comments noted. It doesn't fit either of my two adapters, a fancy 3-way one that lights up the car like the Starship Enterprise that I bought at a trucker gas station in Arkansas last year; you'd think *that* would fit, but it doesn't. Or a two-way one from Jaycar. It's not a bit lose, it's very loose - needs packing out around 2mm.
10 February 2009 at 9:53 am
In your place I'd rig up some sort of spring spacer in one of the adapters. Should keep the light working fine.