Thanks! Sounds great.
Battery life: so how long does a set of charged batteries last?
Do old binos eat more than when they were new?
I don't want to be the boy who cried "Wolf!"
but one good sample that lasted 8 years and you're ready to jump on it and risk paying more than the price of a new 15x50 IS if they break down?
Perhaps you should hear a tale from the Dark Side before making your decision.
This is a story about Ron Durall, a 55-year-old retired Air Force [something or another] who owns RID Pest Control in SW Oklahoma, and who's been married 33 years with 2 kids, a 25-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son .
He bought his 15x50 IS in 2005 and four short years later, they burned out like a candle in the rain. Of course, he took Canon's moniker "All Weather" a bit too literally:
http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1223193
Hopefully Doug from Cameraland was able to put in a good word with Canon and get him a better deal.
The hard fact is that electronic gadgets fizzle - computers, iphones, GPS devices, digital cameras, etc. - although Obama's blackberry is still going strong even though he added an iPad to his communications array.
And it's rare as a four leaf clover to get a lifetime warranty on an electronic item that the manufacturer knows is going to fizzle in time.
A non-IS bins can outlast you, but an IS bin will likely fizzle before they bring the curtain down, and that's going to mean, lots of out of pocket expenses, probably to the point where you're better off buying a new one. That's true of many electronic items.
But if you got a good price, it might be worth the risk.
Just keep them out of the rain.
Brock