The battery is probably bad, China is notorious for cheap generic batteries. When you put a battery in the charger the light should turn orange while the battery is charging.
Re: Arctic: Spyder III: Review
That black piece is just there to keep you from getting fingerprints on the lens when you change caps. If it just has a hole in it then it should not be robbing any power.
You should look around, it's been posted on this forum and on other sites that this diode does in fact run in single longitudinal mode up to 55mW.
W’s Laserblog
You can fix the bad beam specs by tightening a retaining nut.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f65/arctic-forming-rectangular-shape-53740-2.html#post756997
Depends on how much power the diode is running at, in lower power modes it is not a bar (and not running in multimode).
Re: I thought I would post my Arctic glasses observations here . . .
How is that not helpful? He spoke with Maximum PC (the ones you got that photo from) and apparently they told him they purchased extra glasses (explains whey they have two kinds).