This should be cleaned up sometime and made better organized, as well as get more items. Yeah, "sometime" is pretty open ended. That's on purpose ;-)

PRODUCT - CMG tasklight.("infinity")
Specific model/type- RED
DESCRIPTION==tiny machined aluminum LED 'flashlight'.
OVERALL RATING --kickass!
STRONG POINTS
WEAK POINTS

MY USES
Testament to the degree of how useful I find this nifty little thing is that it somehow a couple months back ended up more or less taking up permanent residence around my neck on a string. Even for around-the-house type stuff, It's always there and I can drag it out by the string and look under the couch for something, at the back of a computer case to read a number or jack label on a sound card, etc. One note regarding use, which applies to ANY battery operated item--cold will disable it. I do usually just drop it down the neck of my shirt by its string, so it stays warm anyway, but this wouldn't work if I had it out for extended periods. I do have a couple lithium AA batteries to use for winter hiking/snowshoeing, though. These are expensive, but last somewhat longer, as well as not suffering from performance degradation in the cold..
URLs-- Manufacturer: CMG Equipment
PRODUCT--Ontario SP-8 Machete
DESCRIPTION--heavy, 1/4" thick bladed, square-ended knife. Flat end is sharpened like a chisel. Sawback. Approx 10 inch-long blade.
OVERALL RATING--Excellent, has replaced a couple other pieces of equipment.
GOOD POINTS

BAD POINTS
None, really for me. No major ones I mean. The blade is carbon steel, not stainless, but wearing it for a week outside in intermittently rainy weather didn't cause any noticable rust, but then again I was using it fairly regularly most of the time(any rust wore off before it was noticable maybe). Speaking of which, the black coating will come off the edge fairly fast, but is only going to come off where use is going to keep rust off it probably anyway.
    ...oh, minor little peeve on my part but the leather sheath creaks slightly when walking :-) I also have my latent doubts about the durability of the little plastic D-ring on the bottom end of the sheath, as it hangs on one of those flexible plastic "hinges". I admittedly have so far no reason to suspect it's going to fall off anytime soon though.
MY USES
hacking trails, digging campfire holes (can cut out a nice plug of root-bound soil from the top of the hole to drop back in when leaving camp), splitting kindling for firestarting, cutting firewood, hacking heads or tails off of fish, and other cleaver or axe-type butcher duties. In the winter a few times I used it to carve chunks of snow up for making shelters. Short of being, well, shorter than a standard machete, this will handle anything a machete can-and them some, since a full size machete can be easy to bend, and then most of what a hatchet can too. The sawback isn't much good for actually sawing *through* anything, but as far as I know sawback designs on survival knives and the like are more for forming notches to hold rope or make deadfall triggers, and the like. In other words, they're more file than saw. The sawback on this knife feels dull, but will surprise you by working quite well nonetheless. Part of this seems to be that the finish is plugging up the teeth somewhat, but will wear out of them with a small amount of use. I found the supplied string to tie the lower end of the sheath to your leg to be inadequate, as brush was always untying it for me, and at times, like when a stick caugh the knife, pulling on it, the string would obviously cut in. I soon replaced it with a short nylon backpack strap with a buckle on the end.
URLs Ontario Knives There's a picture on their site of it, but the morons there, or at their web design firm, have apparently simply scanned in the entire print catalog, so be prepared to load a huge image. :-P Luckily, they are as bad at making a website as they are good at making knives.
PRODUCT- Buck M-9 Field Knife
SPECIFIC MODEL/TYPE - Green handle, plain blade (there is, or was, a black version once: black handle and blade)
OVERALL RATING: This is tough. Everything about this knife is great....except that the blade steel is crap. I suppose if, for some reason, you don't need it really sharp, or for very long, it would be good.
DESCRIPTION- Military Issue bayonet/field knife. Sheath combines with knife to make scissor-type wire cutter. Sharpening stone embedded into back of rigid plastic sheath. Nylon pouch on front side of sheath.
GOOD POINTS
Great blade shape. I love it for a general purpose large utility camp/hiking knife. Mostly the point design is sharp yet not delicate, though I think this is mostly a by-product of it having been designed to be a wire cutter.

Indestructible hard plastic sheath. If you are scrambling through brush or climbing a lot over rocks or are otherwise likely to fall onto the knife, it's no way going to cut out of its sheath. This is almost identical, only slightly smaller, than the one on the Buckmaster, if you've ever seen that one.

'nother sheath point: the way it hooks on your belt, the sheath can be detached from the clip that hangs on your belt, so that the whole knife, sheath and all is instantly and easily removable. This is obviously because the sheath is needed to use it as a wire cutter, but this feature is surprisingly nice at times when you want to temporarily ditch the knife for convenience' sake. I'd like to see it in other knives too.

BAD POINTS
BIG one here--the steel is dissappointingly soft. I'm not sure if this is for durabilty, so that when in use as a bayonet it will not snap off so easily, or Buck cut some corners to keep the bid price down. In any case, it's definitely not up to the usual standards. I own several other Buck knives, and this one falls rather short in the edge-holding department. In all fairness, it's not extremely bad, as in not quite as bad as a 99 cent made-in-china lockback, like you find baskets full of at gas station counters, but it's not great either. Since it's designed to be a bayonet, it has a lot of odd protrusions and fittings. I (surprisingly somehow) don't find these to be a hindrance, even in brush, but some may.
MY USES-
I tend to carry this one when I want a larger knife mostly just in case I might need it, rather than for a specific purpose. Actually, since I've picked up the Ontario Machete, I rarely use this one anymore, though it somehow works the best of anything I have for peeling bark; something about the blade geometry I suppose. Given that the edgeholding ability is so poor, this is about all I do with it anymore anyway.
A LAST NOTE: I have seen glowing reviews of this knife from people who I'd think would definitely know better. This is such an inconsistency that it leads me to wonder if there has not been, at some point, a change in the blade steel, so that there are two or more series of production using different steels in the blade.
URLs Well, the manufacturer is Buck, but I don't think they sell this anymore, from looking at their site.

PRODUCT- Otterbox
SPECIFIC MODEL/TYPE - Several various
OVERALL RATING--Great!
DESCRIPTION- small hardshell plastic waterproof crushproof box.
GOOD POINTS- Waterproof as advertised. As tough as advertised.
The couple I had I tested once by weighting them down under about 4 feet of water overnight. None got inside. Supposedly waterproof to 100ft, but I haven't tried that.
BAD POINTS
None really that I've come across. Well, OK, they are sort of heavy for their size when considering taking them backpacking(where ever single last ounce is begrudged), but only to the extent that you don't want to put everything in your pack into Otterboxes. This is not really a design flaw as much as an inherent property of the product. I certainly would not have them lighten them up, and thus weaken them.
MY USES
I was using one as a carrying case for a Palm III, including for hiking and camping with no damage to the Palm at all after having me fall on it (inside the backpack), once being dragged through a river, and snowshoeing. I've also used an otterbox very successfully for keeping firestarting materials safely dry. They now have some for cell phones and cameras. These are a practical way to be able to safely take stuff along that would never otherwise have a chance of surviving in bad conditions.
URLs http://www.otterbox.com


PRODUCT- 4AA LED WATERPROOF LIGHT
SPECIFIC MODEL/TYPE - there seems to be, according to the manufacturer website, an aluminum version as well. Apparently, it is not waterproof, but only water resistant, I'm wildly guessing about similar to a standard Maglite--rain and even heavy splashing is fine, but don't dunk it for more than an instant or short moment. The waterproof one I have is of yellow plastic and black rubber.
OVERALL RATING - Fantastic (Er, I need a standardized system, don't I?)
DESCRIPTION - The light pattern is VERY nice. An adjustable focus might be nicer, but I'm not even sure about that. It casts a wide, perfectly even area of decent illumination, easily more than adequate for walking a path at night. In the center of this diffuse cone is a small spot of brightness which is advertised as having a range of 30 feet. I find it can cast a usable spot of illumination as far away as 100 feet or more, depending on what I'm looking at. On one hand, it might be nice to have an adjustable focus to go full wide-beam and get rid of the distracting bright spot, but then again, you get used to it, and this way the spot beam is always available without fiddling with the focus adjustment.

I noted with interest that the LED bulb is of the fairly standard "PR" form factor. I't seemed to work fine when I stuck it in my 4 D-cell Maglite. At the $7.94 I paid for it, this would be a cheap way to get just the 6Volt LED bulb for use elsewhere.

The light color is somewhat blue, though not as much as the name "cool blue" might indicate. It is about like a mercury vapor lamp. Color representation is pretty normal. Somewhat off from daylight, but still perfectly distinguishable. Red is red, and green is green, unlike under a red or green LED light. Brightness is at first disappointing. When I first tried it, in daylight, I despaired for my wasted cash. This was premature. Unlike a conventional flashlight, this one casts almost no noticable beam in bright daylight, but is more than visible and entirely useful when it's dark enough to actually need it.

GOOD POINTS- (as per listed features on packaging)