here is some free and unsolicited advice. agree/disagree?
situations you will want a cordless drill:
- you are working where there is not guaranteed convenient electricity available
- you need to be extremely mobile and a cord would be hazardous or very inconvenient
- wet environments? idk
examples: rough construction, outdoors, drywall racing
benefits of a corded drill:
- no batteries to charge
- no batteries that can be stolen
- no batteries you can lose or break
- no need to plan around charging batteries
- no batteries which allow the manufacturer to twist your arm into buying a new device when the old one works just fine; less susceptible to planned obsolescence
- no batteries to weigh the tool down: lighter and more comfortable to use the tool and better balance
- tool is smaller and easier to use in cramped situations
- don't need a case, charger, extra batteries or other junk
- one less thing to go wrong; more repairable if it does
- more powerful
you are in a comm called "DIY" = you are probably always working near a power outlet and not going very far. consider a corded drill instead of mindlessly going cordless.
Make sure you get a decent extension cord. I used heatshink tubing to add an extra 6ft to my cord, that makes it long enough for many applications. Sometimes I tie on an extra one.
Perhaps is good advice if you are heavy drill user. As someone who, even when doing big ol' DIY, works a few hours at a time, and isn't using the cordless drill 95% of that time, one battery charge will see me through days of drill-busy work, means the only real disadvantage is I gotta remember to put the battery in the charger when I'm done sometimes.
Also generic chinese copies of the battery are available online (some actually have a higher capacity than the manufacturer's own), so I'm not trapped :)
Id be extremely wary of buying any battery packs with anything other than LG, Samsung, Molicel, or Sanyo batteries in them.
Those cheap chinese batteries use no name cells that typically fib about capacity and amperage. There is also a tradeoff wrt capacity versus amperage. Currently, you can get one, but not both. Harder hitting cells are usually lower capacity, and higher capacity packs usually use a lower amperage rated cell. Theres tradeoffs as with everything.
I agree you should be wary. Especially if you're buying specific-fit batteries like drill packs, I'd suggest just looking for batteries with the exact same specs and shape as the manufacturer, as they'll probably just be from the same factory.
In my case, my drill was old and used a nickel-cadmium battery, the new one was Li-ion, so the capacity was very plausibly (and indeed, is) higher than the original, and I could, indeed "get both" ;)