I can buy a brick of AA alkalines for $.25 - $.30 each not on sale, and
even less when they're on sale. Hard to beat that for inexpensive
batteries, and everything seems to use AA cells.
What's bothering me is that very few flashlight makers have progressed
to designing their lights to use rechargeable cells. If more AA cell
sized flashlights would be designed to use Ni-MH cells, the world would
have a lot less batteries to trash, recycle, etc.