Originally posted by clackers I'm often cycling, hiking or kayaking out in the country, and I've always thought it would be easier to buy some more AAs at a service station than find a power point for several hours. :-)
I can understand that I'm a minority case and the option makes the body bigger than it has to be, though.
Mostly you are right. That being said, in most place in the world, hotels do have power plugs and the situation isn't that bad. Not long ago I was in Tanzania in the middle of nowhere, you couldn't plug a single thing in your own tent for sure but you could plug just fine in the restaurant area. And the cars had powerplugs too. But there was no AA to buy at all.
If you were cautch unprepared there, the next store might be 3 hours drive and you'd better have your charger than to hope for buying some AAs batteries. Nobody would drive you there and ruin their day of safari for it. Worse driving after 6pm was forbidden.
And if you take care to buy an USB charger for your batteries, then you open a whole new world: all cars become a way to charge and you can reuse all the battery storage devices to refill that got popular with smartphones.