Re: Deal extreme and tech laser questi
nova lasers have a very good reputation here (amongst other companies), the only *mildly* disappointed post i've ever seen about them was from someone who'd expected his X-85 (his particular one having a 101mW average rating, the exact power differs slightly between lasers of the same rating) to be noticably brighter than his dealextreme 50mW, which is a very understandable mistake - when i started with lasers i'd've thought the same - but then i found out that you need about 4 times the power for twice the brightness. other than that, people tend to be very happy with purchases from them, and they are very nicely priced, i won an X-85 in a competition here and i love it.
for higher powers, optotronics and laserglow get a lot of good reviews/comments, too, but they're quite a bit more expensive than the pen style lasers (they're more flashlight style, worth the price if you want that high a power). and dealextreme tends to do well with 50mW or below, but higher rated lasers from there tend to be improperly infra-red filtered, and not meet their stated output, at least from what i've heard about them. there's also been comments that they're not built as solidly as other lasers, but for that price, what do you expect?

whatever laser you do go for in the end, i hope you enjoy it lots, and come tell us what it's like!