John, I perfectly understand your point. GP did the same thing to some extent. They made improvements over the life of the cell while keeping the same shrink. In fact, we caught all kinds of grief at the Snowbirds a few years ago for running "special" cells when in fact they were just the latest version of the cell we had aired in. With regard to some racers purchasing packs only to find out in a couple months that there is better stuff available: at the time they buy them they ARE the best available and any changes are slight and incremental. Competition in China to one-up the competition is rampant. Actually, I'm not a big fan of the constant tweaking that all the manufacturers are guilty of because it makes the matchers look bad. But, as you know, we are all at the mercy of the battery companies. We don't determine if or when they change a cell. All I can say is that if you are in the market for packs, don't go crazy and buy 8 or 10 packs. Buy only a couple at a time during this period of intense battery competition. At least the batteries are getting better from batch to batch unlike the Sanyo's which seemed to decline from date code to date code.