On Sat, 3 Jan 2015 07:10:25 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
.. .

The reason for the designed in failures is the need for manufactories
to continue selling replacements. If they actually made a device that
lasts forever, they will sell a few years worth, and then go out of
business because there will be no replacement sales. Reliability is
bad for (consumer) business.

What about lighting for new buildings?

It's strictly a question of selling price.

Joe Sixpack is not going to tolerate $8 "60 watt" lamps in his house.
He wants cheap, at any cost, even if it blows up every few years. I've
noticed that most of the homes that I see that have all LED lighting,
also have a hybrid car, grid tied solar systems, and other energy
conservation devices. They tend to be affluent but not very good at
calculating the alleged savings or comparing with alternatives. When
I do this for them, some don't want to hear the bad news. They'll pay
any price, to save a few pennies. Seriously expensive LED lighting is
not a problem for this market.

However, the rest are tightwads or just plain cheap. They look at the
store shelf and see $1 CCFL lamps next to $10 LED lights. My guess is
they'll buy the $1 lamp and wait for the price of LED's to drop. I
saw this happen at the local hardware store. The flooring manager
said that when he puts the two types of lights next to each other, the
sales of CCFL lamps go up and LED's drop. When he separates them,
putting the LED's in a garish impulse buy display near the cash
register, CCFL sales drop, and LED's go up. The bottom line is that
Joe Sixpack wants cheap lights, and the only way the industry is going
to supply those is to cut corners, which show up as increased infant
mortality and lifetime failures.

However, high reliability lighting (towers, airports, buildings, etc)
are in a different class from Joe Sixpack. You don't find those
lights at the hardware store or supermarket. They're industrial
specialty items, with high quality LED's, and high prices to match.
Reputation is a big thing in such markets, so anything designed to
fail prematurely is not going to last very long.

From my perspective, the cost savings outweigh the "premature" failures.

That totally depends on how you rate lifetime. I get about 2 years on
most of my commodity CCFL lights. I haven't blown out enough lights
to produce useful statistics, but mostly I break them from impact
damage, or something in the electronics burns out, usually with a puff
of smog and a noxious smell. A capacitor would be my guess from the
smell.

However, these are not the best CCFL lights. Why would this company
advertise that their CCFL lamps have 2.5 to 6.6 times the lifetime of
ordinary CCFL lamps?
http://www.ccfllamps.com/_en/02_technology/01_detail.php?fid=3
Is it because their lamps are better, or because the ordinary CCFL
lamps have been cost reduced to produce a shorter lifetime? Dunno,
but I suspect the latter.

LED's are probably similar. You can get those that last forever, and
those that are cost reduced to blow up just after the warranty
expires. If you do the math, my guess is the price/performance ratio
is about the same.

That also begs the question "Why did Arfa Daily post the article"?
My best guess(tm) here is that he's still having problems adjusting
to LED lighting and needs a new reason to not use LED lighting.

Like most people, Arfa doesn't like high-K lighting. I switched to 5000K CFLs,
and though it took a couple of weeks to adjust, I much prefer light that
more-closely resembles daylight, and is subjectively brighter.

It's been a while, but I recall that he could not adjust to LED
lighting. He's not the only one. The neighboring architects office
has two people that claim eyestrain from the replacement LED lighting.
Their section of the office uses ordinary fluorescent tubes and
incandescent desk lamps. (I once suggested kerosene lamps with
predictable results).

I've done some testing on myself to see what works best. 6000K
daylight LED lighting seems best for doing fine detail work.
2700-3000K is much easier on my eyes for reading, but I have trouble
focusing on detail and fine print. I use both where appropriate.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558