In , Paul M. Eldridge wrote:
Hi John,

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:03:10 -0700, "John Weiss"
jrweiss98155nospamatnospamcomcastdotnospamnet wrote:

So far, my longest-lived CFLs are a pair from Ikea that were on sale for
$1.00 each, and have been running 24/7 outside my garage for about 4 years
now.

I don't know much about the IKEA brand of CFLs. I seem to recall the
reviews were mixed in terms of their colour rendering, but I have no
first hand experience to judge this (Don Klipstein would be the best
person to confirm this particular point). In any event, fours years
service is pretty damn impressive -- i.e., 4 years x 8,760 hrs/yr =
35,040 hours, or the equivalent of 35 to 45 incandescent bulbs (each)
and counting!.

I have seen a couple different versions of the "Ikea Specials" and fair
chance not all of them. But so far, they appear to me to have the usual
color rendering index of 82 and a color that I consider a little
more incandescentlike than average.

I still have some of my 7 and 9-watt single stick Philips PL lamps I
had purchased back in 1984. They're been long since relegated to odd
ball places where they don't get a lot of use, but some twenty-three
years later they continue to fire up every time.

Holy HO-LY Cow! This sounds like a bit of history here! Those things
were pretty new back then. When were they first introduced - early
1980's? I think I first saw one in 1983, and heard about them as
something really new maybe in 1981 or 1982 or so. They were pretty
newfangled and just beginning to catch on a little in 1989.

- Don Klipstein )