>Cheers Viv. Mmmm, maybe quite an outlay at first - but worth it over the years, i guess. I wonder about dimmablity as well. Not all halogens will respond to the dimmer switch. And don't LEDs use multiples of LEDs to control brightness, so stepping up or down rather than dimming?

I have a wind-up hand lamp, and when it's empty, the brightness is linearly proportionate to the handle's speed. So I think just lowering the voltage (or whatever) does it. They may be used in digital things, but they seem to be quite analog in their nature.