Maybe I am just lucky, but most of the CFLs I have have been going strong for about 5 years. The only ones I can think of that failed were in my car drop light ( no surprise there). I don't think I paid more than a buck ( maybe $2 for the 23 watt ones) for any of them. When we are watching telly at night, we have one on that basically lights most of the house.

I know my air con is happy not having to cool all that waste heat generated by incandesents.

I'm going to have to think ahead for the Lava lamp, though...

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80 300SD (129k mi) 82 240D stick (193k mi)77 240D auto - stick to be (153k mi) 85 380SL (145k mi) 89 BMW 535i 82 Diesel Rabbit Pickup (374k mi) 91 Jetta IDI Diesel (155k mi) 81 VW Rabbit Convertible Diesel 70 Triumph Spitfire Mk III (63kmi)66 Triumph TR4a IRS (90k mi)67 Ford F-100 (??)