Ozzie wrote:

I've been reading some of the recent posts, on CFL's. Maybe I haven't read
enough of them, to find the same thing, which happened to mine.

First, I'm really disappointed, they don't have the life span, as normal
bulbs. My packages claim to have a life span, up to 7 years. That's
probably the "got cha", the "up to". But, I've never had to replace my
bulbs, as often as I do these. I've now replaced a grand total of 14, which
failed prematurely. This is in a 5 month time span. These are/were the
dimmable mini's, 75 watt, with a power factor of 0.90. They are listed as
UL, and energy star, and claims to use only 15 watts.

Something else about these things. I've now had 3 of them go out, which let
out a puff of smoke. It's a foul smelling odor. Exactly what is being
released?

Try a different brand, and analyze your dimmers and power in general for
problems. I've used a lot of CFLs of various brands and none of them
have given me any issues or short life spans, not the ones that operate
a few hours a day, nor the few that are 24x365 (no, at 24x365, they last
~3 years, not 7). I haven't used many dimmable CFLs though the few I
have used also worked fine.