Ah yes but shining the laser at blocks and mirrors and snow isn't really a USE, is it?
My main purpose for having the lasers is my lumia wheel show - I think EVERYONE with a laser should either make or spend $30 to get one. It's the single coolest effect (IMO) you can create.
Pretty much every night when I get home I turn the lights down, put some music on and start the lumia wheel. It easily covers the walls of a house or apartment with an incredible light show and I personally find it very relaxing.
And it's fun to experiment, since so many factors can change the look of the effect - the kind of glass you use, the distance the laser is to the glass, the focus of the beam (I just discovered this week that changing the focus (and therefore the size of the dot hitting the wheel) drastically changes the look of the lumia effect.
Anyway you can totally customize the look to how you like it, and it gives me a "legitimate" reason to buy different lasers!
Still, very high power lasers are a different story. You really don't need more than 10mw of green (maybe 100mw of red) to make a good lumia show (in your house, anyway). Sure, I have a high power green and an Arctic on order because, well, we ALL just want to have at least one monster to show off to our friends and burn things with... but let's face it, they don't really have much of a use.
You can lie to yourself and say it's for personal protection, but a high power laser is a really innefficient way to ward off an attacker, and risky at best - if you don't get him in the eyes well enough to disorient him, the only thing left is to hit them over the head with it!
The fact is, lasers over 100mw start to become a serious injury risk and there is very little legitimate reason to own one.
And "but it's cool" isn't really a good reason.
It's our FAVORITE reason, but we should all be mature enough to admit it's just not a good one
op: 