I have been saving my pennies (literally $20 at a pop), and I am now ready to either replace the batteries for my dewalt drill/driver, or get a new drill. I saw the typical retail price of $120 for the new dewalt nicad batteries, and think that a new li-ion drill is in my future. I did a search on this forum and looked at some reviews on amazon.

Not much recently on this forum as guidance... from 2007 to 2009, there are a lot of posts but the opinions vary across makita, bosh, milwaukee (not made in WI, I learned... gosh), and panasonic. Is this the best we can do? Waffle around when it comes to cordless drill/drivers/hammerdrill? I want clarity! (for example, for a biscuit joiner, get a PC unless you can afford that italian branch the name of which I can't remember just now... of course, I have a dewalt, but it works fine for my limited use... but at last we all know who kicks ass in this category.)

All kidding aside, I have zeroed in on Makita--$250 to $299 is the non-sale price for the LXPH01 or LXPH05--and I saw all the comments on chuck wobble and battery failures. But Makita stlll seems to be a top-notch tool if I don't get unlucky and get a lemon. Bosh has a great reputation. So does Milw (and I wasn't even aware of Panasonic until my search... ) I also saw comments on Dewalt and Hitachi being a good... but the majority of opinion for top-notch, price is no object, seems to settle on Bosh or Makita.

all the posts I researched were pretty old... anyone do research lately on this? Fine Woodworking had a review way back in issue 207. Anyone see any head to head tests recently? I probably can't go wrong in any of these directions, but it is a decision that only comes once in a while and I want to give it a chance to be based on something more then color preference (green or red or blue?)

Help?