In Spring, I bought the Earthwise 20-Inch 24 Volt Cordless Electric 3-in-1 Lawn Mower with Grass Bag from my local ACE Hardware store (it's not even listed on their website anymore).

It's available now via eBay.com and Amazon.com links below. I paid $318 for mine (including sales tax).

We've used it all summer to mow our quarter-acre lot (our 960 sq ft house reduces that, so does our 600 sq feet of garden) and it will do it all on one charge. Yes, it'll mow over small sticks from our half-dozen trees like my gas mower did. But I also don't mow over large sticks as a precaution.

At first, as the manual says, the mower needs a few charge/discharge cycles (4-6) before the battery is able to charge to 100% capacity. But ever since reaching that point, we've been able to mow our entire yard on one charge.

I find that my wife likes mowing with this (she likes mowing anyway) more than she did the gas mower. It's easy for her to start and she can push it just fine (She's about 5' 5" tall).

I don't miss trips to get gas or air filters or fuel filters. And I don't miss the tedium of filling a mower with gas or oil. I also don't miss the smell.

Although I thought it would be, remembering to plug the mower in to charge hasn't been an issue.

I worry less about our son (curious as a preschooler) coming up and touching the mower while it's off. Gas mowers get hot, especially the muffler. The electric mower doesn't provide that 'burning' danger the gas one did.

I'm a satisfied customer, and would recommend this mower for owners of a quarter-acre and below. I can't speak to owners of more than quarter-acre since that's not something I know about.

Rotary mowers are they types of mowers with which you're most likely familiar. The blade spins on a vertical axis, like a CD on a CD player or a helicopter propeller.

Reel mowers have multiple blades that spin on a horizontal axis like the paddlewheel of a steamship, or the head of a farmer's combine, or the roller part of a steamroller.

As far as I know, there's only one model of electric cordless reel mower (which we will include below), but we ruled it out because we don't rake the twigs from our yard, and reel mowers by-design jam when encountering twigs.

In other words, most of the electric cordless lawn mowers on this page will be rotary mowers.

I've seen mowers that use 60 volt batteries (like the Remington uses), 36 volt batteries, and 24 volt batteries - whether a single 24 volt battery, or two 12 volt batteries together.

Most batteries used by these mowers aren't interchangable shapes or voltages. In other words, unless you get creative, you'll likely buy the replacement batteries from the manufacturer.

The unique exception I've seen is the Sunlawn EM-2 reel mower, which uses two 12 volt batteries, which you can replace with common 12 volt batteries from Radio Shack. That feature was appealing to me, but the nature of reel mowers jamming on twigs (I hate to rake) outweighed this plug-n-play replacement battery feature.

Some batteries can't handle cold temperatures, so you much bring them in during the winter. Others can handle temperatures as low as -40 (can't remember whether F or C). So if you're winter storage isn't above a certain temp, be mindful of off-season storage temperatures. Usually the lawnmower manuals will indicate how to care for the battery.