>>>>Mike just got me worried so I looked it up. Scare-mongering. See the below:
>>>>
>>>>http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070518-cfls-bulbs.html
>>>
>>>I know. The problem is that there is already mercury around us and every single broken bulb will add. It will never get lost. This is the same problem with any fluorescent tube.
>>>
>>>An other problem is that you get I minimal poison here and a minimal poison there. Scientists test each poison but not the combination we live in.
>>>
>>>CFLs are best as straight forward lights - they need a high energy for start up and will run with less. Commonly a single start need 45 minutes to compensate against a normal bulb. They are flickering - doe to there electronics with a higher frequency then a normal fluorescent tube but they are. And the bigest problem to me is that they only send a small spectrum of light (What they share with LEDs).
>>>We do not want to now the overall energy ratio, where we have to take the energy for production into account. I do not believe that we save much energy on this.
>>>
>>>Agnes
>>
>>My next-door neighbour got rid of hers cos she didn't like the light output.
>>
>>Would you believe that after talking about these yesterday, how they last long time, and how I use them in my hall, I got home to find that the bulb in the hall had blown.
>>
>>(Twilight Zone music)
>
>There is a lot of rubbish on the market. Hart to distinguish from each other.
>What I found out (I use this on some places for around 15 years now) is that there are a kind called "warm start". They need several minutes to start (the start dimm and go brighter). If one use those in an on/off environment they will die fast.
>
>Agnes

Yes these are several years old. Generally the hall light is switched on when it gets too dark and is switched off at bedtime. The current oldish bulbs take a second or two to come on, and tens of seconds to brighten up, I wouldn't say minutes, but one never notices when they reach their optimum.

We just received some new ones free in the mail, and they come on and brighten up almost immediately.