My luck with batteries so-so. I finished a Radiation oncology facility two years ago (Commercial Superintendent), lots of steel, concrete and 180,000lbs of 99.9% pure lead, little if any trace amounts of alloy in this stuff used for shielding. Obviously some was left over and found a battery place in town purchasing lead. What the guy behind the counter told me was the manufacturers have been using not so pure lead and using less in weight per battery. He also made a comment about Optima, not good.
Batteries 25 years ago weighed more than today and I usually got four years of service from a Die Hard, all batteries have handle on them so you can bring them back and pay more money. What I hear now where I live is its the heat, lucky to get two to three years, (see first paragraph) makes me want to reach out and choke someone. When I purchased my truck I knew the batteries would need replacing, Odyssey was an option, too much. Looked a little further and found Absorbed Glass Matt (AGM) batteries. $100 cheaper built by I believe Northstar, sold by Sears with a four year warranty and Batteries Plus with a five year warranty. So I purchased two from Batteries Plus and time will tell (Odyssey is an AGM battery)
AGM batteries are my choice as I have no risk in leaking and ruining the cables, cannot comment on running just one, need to replace the batteries in pairs, the old one will eventually kill the new one.