I actually like my active pickups, but keep in mind active pickups are generally quite narrow minded about the sound they give out. If you're buying active pickups your almost definately buying them for hard rock, and well, hard rock alone. But then again their are active pickup combo's that introduce a little bit of variety, but they still are quite fixed.

Major advantage I believe in active pickups is that at high distortion levels chords come through damn nicely, once again though, you've got to have your mind on a particular genre. trying to play beach boys on an active pickup guitar might prove pointless, but playing metallica on active pickups is perfect.

Also the complaints about the battery are absolute bull crap, if players are willing to restring their guitar once a month (which takes time and patience) how hard is it to replace the 9v battery in the guitar every 6 months?