>>The current generation of them take a second or so to come on - not too bad. Some (not consistant) do seem to slowly bring their light output up to full strength.

The one on my desk starts as dim pink and takes almost a minute to come bright. It's about six years old.

>I'm talking like the spots or halogens, in wee rings set into the ceiling. Imagine them with twisty fluorescents dangling from them :-)

Well just about any fixture was unable to accept them fluorescents for years. They were all designed about an inch too short. I actually had four CDs dangling around my desktop lamp just to reflect the direct light a bit away.

>Talking LEDs: Years ago I had an old Casio red LED calculator. The battery was too low to power it. A mate said, "here, let's have your battery." He then put the battery in his LCD calculator and it ran on for ages after. Now we have low energy and really bright LEDs - how technology has moved on. I wonder how little energy LCD lights would consume! :-)

Just as RAM-disk caching takes almost no processor time.