I'm drawn to the electric, mostly due to ease of use.  They may be less powerful, but you don't have to worry about getting the gas/oil mixture right, or getting the damn thing to start in the first place.  For my relatively minimal needs in suburbia, electric is just fine.  That said, some people need gas - back when my family still had a farm, a lot of those two stroke tools were absolutely essential.  Battery powered stuff just wouldn't have been powerful enough.

My anectdote driven opinion:

Electric is optimal for many people - people like me - who live in the suburbs on a smallish lot where an extension cord can reach pretty much any location on the property therefore a gas engine is not really needed and thus electric powered devices/tools cord/cordless are wholly sufficient for my needs.  They work great, are relatively quiet (except the leaf blower which emits a migraine inducing shriek), and always seem to function even after a year or more of sitting neglected in the basement or tool shed between uses.  

I can easily envision people living in exotic places surrounded by many acres of berserk flora continually seething in a tumult of growth. Writhing green hell encroaching, enveloping, and overwhelming all useful and aesthetic attempts to impose the will of man on the untamed world.   If you need portability and power at your ranch/compound/potemkin masturbatory fantasy for drooling idiots - you probably need gas powered tools - just ask George Bush.  

The one thing I have heard often enough to be concerned about is how gas engines need more TLC than electric powered devices - and for things like snow blowers that see very infrequent use and sit forgotten in the garage until the big snowstorm and then they wont start - the dependability/robustness of an electric motor might be a good idea.  The same would probably be true for chainsaws owned by anyone who isn't in the logging industry or the president of the united states - if you rarely use it, consider electric.

QUESTION for the audience:  Cordless Reciprocating Saw - do these have enough power to do the types of demolition jobs that a saws-all typically is used for?

"...when theft and high crime becomes obscenely obvious to even the blindest beer sucking idiot, it is always the Republicans who are in office." -- Joe Bageant