Temperature of under-cupboard fluorescent fittings?
 

I recently fitted four 8W T5 under-cupboard fluorsecent 'cabinet
link-lights' manufactured by Eterna (pg. 17 of their 1MB catalogue at
http://www.eterna-lighting.co.uk/eterna2.pdf) in my kitchen.

Having not been impressed by the colour of the light I replaced the
supplied 'standard' tubes with Osram Interna Lumilux tri-phosphor tubes
with a filament-matching temperature of 2700K. The light output is now
superb, both in terms of colour rendition and matching of the other
lamps in the kitchen (filament and a cooker hood halogen).

However, my only gripe is with the heat that the light fittings give
off - not so much the tubes themselves but rather the actual fitting.
Indeed the casing becomes too hot to touch with the consequence of some
heating of the cupboards above.

Knowing nothing about fluorescent technology I did some searching of
past posts, and some other Internet publications, and now realise that
given my fittings are quite heavy and have a 'standard' starter poking
out of the back they thus are not 'electronic'? Thus, they use a
standard choke inside which is creating all this heat? Are they also
inefficient? The fittings are labelled as 'energy saving' however..

My question (finally!) is thus: What are my chances of being able to
(cheaply) convert these fittings to electronic ballasts/starters? Would
the guts of true slimline (slimline = must be electronic?) fittings
(e.g. those from TLC at http://tinyurl.com/6aqjs) be transferrable? If
so, which wattage would I need (mine are 8W)?

Alternatively, would I be best just ditching my current setup in favour
of the TLC items above (which would also provide flicker-free startup)?
I do REALLY like my current 2700K output, however, so would the 3400K
(still tri-phosphor) TLC tubes be noticeably different? If so, does
anyone know where I could get hold of 2700K T4 tubes in the TLC
lengths?

Questions questions...

Mat