I just looked on my favourite lamp buying site in the UK, and they don't
appear to do any standard lightbulbs except ecobollox types at all now.
Even
the halogen ones that Phil mentions, now don't seem to be available. I
have
one of those in my hallway, and it is superb. They are basically a halogen
capsule bulb, inside a 'standard' lightbulb. The one I have is a pearl
type,
so nice even light, but I seem to recall someone saying that even those
had
been made available only in a clear glass outer shell, and now it looks
like
that has gone as well. It really ****es me off actually, that yet another
mature technology that gave good even and diffuse light - the whole reason
that that pearlisation of the envelope was introduced in the first place -
has now been forcibly replaced with an ecobollox product that doesn't hold
a
candle (pun intended) to what it's replacing. I wouldn't mind if the end
justified the means. I read the other day that it has been calculated that
in the UK, if every single conventional lightbulb was changed for an
ecobollox type, all it would save is the output from one small power
station.

We're been through this before.

British CFLs must be of very poor quality, because you can get excellent
ones in the US. They come instantly -- faster than incandescent -- and have
good color balance.

I've replaced all but the miniature "decorative" lamps in my condo with
CFLs. I would never go back to incandescent.

I'm writing this in my den. The light is from a 100W-equivalent Home Depot
CFL in an IKEA shade. The /only/ way you can tell it's not incandescent is
by looking under the shade.

The bathroom has a 6-bulb "bar". The middle bulbs have been loosened so they
won't light, and the end bulbs replaced with CFLs. Yeah, it looks a bit
funny. Big deal.