it appears this is the newest and best of the affordable aspect, my question is are there any retailers for lithium ion (rechargable if i have it wrong) and the correct chargers?

i liked my NIMH when it became cheap because it was nice to not have to have the tradition of draining the cell fully. but the output in my mini maglight at work sucks! plus it'd be awesome not having to recharge my nimh aa's for my xbox 360 remotes as often lol.

 

energizer makes a li-ion battery. duracell might as well.

i believe they are charged like a standard battery as well.

 

You can't charge a lithium with a standard battery charger. The charge is regulated by the charger that's made for them. They can explode in a nicad charger.

 

its a different voltage / amperage, all i know. its hard to find any chargers let alone a AA charger for li-ion.

 

I'm not completly up to date on them, but The lithiums , charging amperage has to very due to the venting process. Nicads are only 1.2 volt per cell, aheras alkeline are 1.8. Litiums fall somewhere in between, but as I said, the the amperage fed to them has to vary so that don't blow. So the charger has to sense the heat within them by the amount of amperage they absorb.
I'm sure Bill Murray could answer your questions, because he runs the hobby shop. Shoot him a PM, I'll betcha he can hook you up.