We all love the freedom of going wireless. No longer tethered, we can move around wherever we want and place our objects anywhere.

But going wireless comes at a price: batteries.

I have made compromises in the name of battery life. I wanted Audible support in my portable music player, but I couldn't find one with adequate battery life so I purchased one without. There are thinner, lighter mobile phones than mine, but few (if any) come close to the 12.5 hours of talk time per charge I get from my thicker, heavier mobile phone.

But game controllers were-note the past tense-one area where one could go wireless without worrying about battery life. PlayStation 2 and GameCube wireless controllers from Logitech, Hori and Nintendo could be used for hundreds of hours before their batteries needed to be replaced.

You won't get 50 hours of battery life out of a PlayStation 3, Wii or Xbox 360 wireless controller.

With the new generation of game consoles, you have to more often replace or recharge game controller batteries. The former gets expensive over time, and requires one to keep a stash of batteries if one wishes to play with minimal interruption. The latter frequently turns a wireless controller into a wired controller, and with it a regular loss of freedom of movement and placement.

And both of those make life just a little more frustrating. Perhaps a lot more frustrating, considering you have to deal with not one, but as many as seven regularly dying wireless game controllers per console.