Bikes are a fun way to get from point A to point B. They aren't useful -- at least to me -- if they can't be used when it's necessary to get from A to B. When I was a commuter, I'd leave before dawn most days, and often return after sunset during the winter. This means I had to have lights. Not only is this the law (you must have lights on vehicles when vision is impaired), it's also the only safe way to share the road with other vehicles. If you want to know why the government requires bikes be sold with useless reflectors, but be ridden with lights at night, well, you'll probably find the answer here.
I bought the Spanninga Retroled solely based on it's looks. It looks great on my bike. It's got one LED and uses two AA Alkaline batteries, but it's purported to last 600 hours. As a result, you wouldn't expect it to light a dark road at night, and it doesn't. It will let you be seen, and I can use enough ambient light, or go slowly enough, so that the amount of light isn't important . Sure, I'd love a generator system someday, but this is OK for now. I tried using rechargeable batteries, but the amount of light produced was drastically smaller, and with the low discharge rate, I stuck with the batteries that came with it.
I used a B&M Headlight mount to mount it to the fork crown; this way it would be below my handlebar bags and still be unobstructed. I used an old bolt to take up the space in the mount, and that worked well.
The Retroled is fragile. The first one arrived broken, and Velo-Orange, to their credit, immediately sent me a new one. That one arrived unscathed, but broke identically when I dropped it putting it on my bike. I used electrical tape, then shiny duct tape, to fix it.
The Retroled looks great and works adequately. I spent about $27 for the hardware, light and shipping. If I had a different criteria -- one other than looks -- I'd probably opt for a CATEYE or PLANETBIKE 1 watt LED system.
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