All week we've been talking about how to squeeze some extra playing time out of your portable gaming systems. And one thing that modern portable systems have in common is their rechargeable batteries. Rechargeable batteries are great in most cases... except when you don't have any convenient way to plug them to recharge.

That's why I keep handy my old Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, and my original taco-shaped Game Boy Advance. They run on easily-replaceable batteries.

In a power-outage situation, you're likely going to have access to batteries of some sort, and popping out two AA's and then popping in two more will get you back up and gaming at full power in less than a minute, whereas if you have to recharge your batteries, it can take as long as 4 hours to get them back up to speed.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.