New Radio - Baofeng

[CraginS]

My Yaesu Vertex VX-150 radio bit the dust last month Neither of my two NiCad batteries would hold a charge to turn it on. Rather than throw new money for a battery at a discontinued model, I started pricing replacements. Most of the common current 2 meter handhelds are still in the $150 to $400 price range. However, recently there was discussion on OzReport of 2m/70cm dual band Baofeng radios, available on Amazon for $30 to $60.

I splurged on the 5 watt UV-82 for $50, over the 4 watt $30 UV-5. Seems pretty nice - even has a commercial FM receiver mode and an LED flashlight.

Not much experience with it, yet, but so far, I'm liking it.

Cool feature - programmable from a computer, to set all channels, even name, with the free program
CHIRP. Much better than programming with the keypad.
http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home

Important tip- to program it from a computer, you need a special USB cable that connects to the radio.
Do NOT buy the cheapie ($7) model on Amazon. Pay the $27 for the "Official" Baofeng FTDI cable. This is the advice of the US distributor Baofeng Tech.
http://baofengtech.com/
They are right. I bought the cheap one first - never got it working. THE FTDI as recommended is working with CHIRP on both my WIn 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 computers.