They give you full brightness at switch on, unlike
compact fluorescents that take time to warm-up.

Yes, but...

The better CFLs are quite bright at turn-on -- bright enough that you
don't feel you bought a defective lamp.

The operative word being "quite". I thought you said that your Home
Despot
types came on quicker than an incandescent. Certainly doesn't sound that
way
from that description ... And as far as I'm concerned, any incandescent
replacement technology lamp that does not produce the *full* light
output
within a few mS of switch on, or is ambient temperature dependant for
its
performance, *is* a defective lamp.

The Home Depot lamps come on instantly at a level I'd judge to be around
60% -- maybe higher -- of full brightness. Full brightness takes another
30 seconds or so. This is a huge improvement over the bulbs from 15 years
ago.

With all due respect William, that is the most feeble justification that
you
have come up with so far. It's like the government banning cars and making
everybody buy bikes instead, and then turning round and saying that riding
a
bike is still better than when you had to walk before the bike was
invented
... If it has taken 15 years so far to get these dreadful things from
total crap to utter crap, then by the time they are actually at a point
where they can properly replace incandescent lamps, I will be a pile of
dust
anyway. I'm afraid that I cannot, by any stretch of my imagination, equate
"60%" and "30 seconds" to either "instant" or satisfactory replacement
technology. If they really were 'good', they wouldn't need defending
against
all of the criticisms that are levelled against them by (colour blind ??)
people the world over.

From my perspective, I don't know why I /need/ to justify the better current
CFLs. To only slightly paraphrase Sam Spade... "They're good. They're very
good."

I don't think objections come solely from people with non-standard color
vision (though, obviously, they're more-sensitive to non-continuous
spectra). There are multiple issues.

People are used to lights reaching "full" brightness very quickly. This is
of no concern to me, if the lamp more-than-sufficiently bright when it's
turned on. (This one reason I use only 90W or 100W-equivalent CFLs. When
you're using only one-fourth the energy of a standard incandescent, why use
anything smaller?)

People object to the shape of coiled CFLs -- at least when they're visible.
The choice of shade should fix this.

People object to being forced to buy something they don't want. This is a
political issue that should perhaps be discussed later.