* The new lampholders they ship with those two-wire electronic
ballasts (one wire to each end of the lamp) have the shorting bar
built in between the two pins. *The electronic ballasts don't need to
preheat the filament to get it started, they have enough of a HV start
pulse - and it saves the 4 to 6 watts used to heat the filaments.

* Now you have to be careful not to get them mixed up with the
old-style two wire lampholders used with standard magnetic ballasts -
they are marked, but sometimes that's only little letters molded into
the white plastic and Not Easily Seen unless you know to look.

* The split old ones are easily jumped with a short piece of wire for
a new electronic ballast, but the other direction isn't possible.

I have a fixture in my kitchen (four strips with separate ballasts,
built into a box on the ceiling) that goes intermittent when it gets
humid. Cleaning the tubes helps some, but it still gets annoying
having some of the tubes flicker on long after the rest, or sometimes
not at all. My understanding is that the charge leaks down the
outside of the tube when they're dirty and it's humid. Would changing
over to electronic ballasts help minimize this at all?

Thanks,
--Glenn Lyford