For those of us who use the incandescent bulbs please remember that dimming the bulbs saves money and energy! A savings of about $30.00 a year per bulb does add up and you get to control your lights for the time and mood of the day. My husband has worked for Lutron Electronics, the world's leader in lighting control and design, here in Coopersburg,Pa. for over 30 years and we love the control and saving we get using dimmers throughtout our home.We often do not change a bulb for years and years!
From a single tabletop dimmer to a whole house wireless system it is another choice one may make when it comes to lightbulbs and lighting your life at home.

Over the last 4 years we bought several packages and generations of CFLs. Besides that the first generation spirals look ugly and you need a lamp you can hide them in, they were expensive in the beginning. At least 4 of these bulbs died within less of 4 months of use.

The one in our entrance broke, maybe because these bulbs are not suitable for outside temperatures. The other ones died in places where regular bulbs had survived for years. Who knows why, there is no information given with the packages.

I recommend a regulation that requires bulb makers to at least clearly state on the package that broken lightbulbs need special handling because the are toxic. Also require makers or vendors to provide places where to discard them. As with plastic bottles it cannot be expected that the local communities have to pick up the waste and tap for the Makers.

We are very environmentally aware but this is a worse waste of money than the old bulbs. We will not buy any spiral bulbs anymore as long as the inferior quality is around. It should not be up to the consumer to guess which ones are good or bad quality.

Note, the newer generations of CFLs which are round and look more like a regular lightbulb seem to last longer.

I agree with cserpent, my boss told me to buy them instead of the regular ones last year. He said they were on sale at Home Depot. So of course I wnet and bought a package of them, thank god they were on sale. Then when I open the package there was one that did not work at all, the others would flicker in every lamp or fixture I put them in, so that was a waste of money and time. Thank god Home Depot refunded my money for them.
I just purchased a home and my boss, was doing repairs for me and he left a package of them there, he used one of the bulbs, where I do not know yet, but the bulb went out in my dinning room hanging light the other night, so I crab the package and one fell out on my hard floor and glass was ever where, so of course I get the broom and dust pan threw it in the trash,and then I vacummed the floor. While I was doing that my boyfriend comes in barefoot, so I yelled at him to get out of the way. I didn't want him to get any in his feet. Then I grab another bulb and of course all is does is flicker and make noise. Back to the regular bulbs again.
I sure wish I would have read this info before, ecspecially the part about how to clean it up.

The light bulb was invented by Canadian Henry Woodward. The patent was purchased from him, by Thomas Edison.

What do I do when one burns out? How do I get rid of it? These have been around for years and I just recently found out you can't throw them in with your trash.

We can talk about wattage and/or lumens all we want but NOBODY is talking about brightness! I want to same amount of footcandles (brightness) in the CFLs as I have in my incandescent bulbs at a given distance. A 15 watt CFL does NOT produce the same amount of usable light as a 60 watt incandescent. Any doubts, check it out with a photographic light meter.

At my age I need all the light I can get for reading and other up close tasks. So far I have yet to see any practical and valid comparisons for equal brightness between bulbs and CFLs in the mass market. Maybe things have changed in the last year but in my shop I had to replace CFLs after six to eight months with the lights on about 45 hours/week.

As they say, "Talk is cheap . . ."

What wasn't mentioned in this article is the effect of the electromagnetic frequencies and the UV radiation given off by CFLs. The Canadian government is now doing studies on the effects. If you are at all sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies, do not put CFLs anywhere that you will be spending a lot of time.

Bought a new home in 06 and replaced all old bulbs w/CFL's. The CFL bulbs cost about five times as much as incandescent bulbs, but they're supposed to last ten years. Right! Each fan/light fixture has at least one CFL out, all in the first year! The 3-way CFL's in my table lamps--very expensive--never worked at all. And the city and county have NO recycling program for the dangerous mercury bulbs. What the H. am I supposed to do with them? Bury 'em?

What a total rip-off! When people I know w/CFL's in fan/light fixtures think carefully, they realize that they too have had failures with those excessively expensive bulbs. I'll tell ya: I ain't buyin' any more of 'em. Back to incandescents. Fool me once: shame on you. Fool me twice: shame on me.

I just came from Walmart (Ottawa, Canada) and they had 5 different kinds of LED light bulbs, even ones to replace halogen! All were under 8 bucks.

What about the fact that they are only made in China?

The options noted for the drop in sales of CFLs, first time since 2002 did not include the most obvious one for me: Possibly I am buying fewer of these because I have purchased them to replace all the bulbs in my house and they are actually lasting 10 times longer than the incandescent bulbs they replaced. My conclusion is that I am now buying fewer bulbs because I don't need to replace them as frequently. Not because of the cost or my hesitation because of mercury content etc.