GE's Bright Idea is a Halogen/CFL Hybrid Bulb

[f-14]

CFl sucks balls, the headaches you get from it are due to the noise and the flicker they create. i want to see better not make my eyes worse and get a headache worth killing the CFL inventor/engineers over.
cfl has been around for so long the only places that use it are the ones with high energy bills and don't give a damn about their employees.
only bulb i buy now is halogen here's a quarter it'll pay for that bulb use every month and still have change and is 1 million times better then cfl which makes it worth it.
cfl is as bad as 1950's 3D with the funny glasses.
technology gets better, not worse anybody promoting cfl needs to go back to using a commodore64 to do their computing and F'off and stop wasting mine and everyone elses time with stumping for bad obsolete technology.

 

[f-14]

by the way CFL has mercury in it known to cause birth defects and other reproductive problems in all species like in mexico where the ground water is so polluted with mercury 1 in every thousand babies is born with out a brain, keep promoting CFL pollution, it's toxic and when your CFL dies you have to pay to dispose of a hazzardous material which is illegal to dispose of in landfills per EPA laws back in the 1960's and 1970's. any savings you get will be mitigated by disposal costs.
give a hoot don't pollute

 

[drutort]

personally this is a horrible idea, and like many said far too late, so what happens when the halogen part dies? you have to throw it away? oh there goes your whole idea of long lasting (which most CFL's fail) but some good brands have been lasting for a long time even the dimmer types, which have been enjoying them a lot, and to me the little dim at first is a feature, especially when you go into a room when you wake up and hit the lights

one way to overcome the dimming is simply have far greater light then you need and have the CFL's be dimming that means the initial start up when cold will be pretty much where you want it and then you even dim it or leave it bright

I know that CFL's can bring a lot more light then the conventional counter parts could ever do due to the limited watt rating (heat)

why couldnt they just use a small heating element wrap around the CFL? very thin wire like, and that would heat up the CFL and last almost forever, probably take less then the halogen too

 

[blackened144]

They both suck.. Ive lived in my condo for almost 3 years and it took about 1.5 years for the original 3 incandescent bulbs to burn out in my bathroom and in the last 1.5 years, 2 of the 3 replacement CFL bulbs are dead..

 

[rbarone69]

I mean wow... wonder who authorized the R&D department to waste their time on this invention.

I hate to say it, but this invention should be thrown out in favor of CREE LED chips.

 

[Sicundercover]

No one seems to be addressing the real issue.

CFL's are full of mercury, its the same as the fluorescent lighting in the work place.

You can not dispose of these things in the landfill because the mercury will leech in to the water table. Also, if you break them in your house you increase the mercury toxicity of the environment of your house which can (and is well known for) cause many learning disabilities in your children.

 

[eddieroolz]

Good idea, but I'm not aware of anyone I know that has complained about the warmup time. I'm perfectly fine about it as well.

 

[Darkv1]

While the warm up time on CFLs is annoying, the real annoyance I've found is that they don't work with dimmer switches...even the $12 "dimmer-CFLs" don't work...guess I'll be hoarding incandescents for my living room...

 

[weatherdude]

Modern CFL's are great except for the candelabra/chandelier base ones that I'm able to find in stores. In my experience those ones need some serious warm-up time compared to medium base bulbs. All the medium base CFL's I've used are practically instant on. Just be sure to stick to better brands.

 

[Nimmist]

While I’m not against CFLs, I do have a problem with choice being taken away from me. A CLF breaking in a confined room is very different than mercury being released outdoors. Not all rooms can easily be ventilated, such as those in basements. There is also much more effort and care that needs to be put into the clean-up of a broken CLF ( http/www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html ). We are constantly told about how dangerous even a trace amount of mercury is, yet for some reason CLFs are considered just fine even when they are going to land-fills. If CFLs need to be recycled or properly disposed of, then recycling/disposal plants need to be provided AS SOON AS CFLs are sold. Maybe there really isn’t an issue with the level of mercury in CLFs, but lead paint was also considered safe at one point.

My only real complaint is the push to ban all incandescent light bulbs. Make both products and let me choose which is right for me.

 

[bayouboy]

[citation][nom]f-14[/nom]Nonsensical gibberish.[/citation]

Are you for real? You do realize almost every hospital in the US uses florescent lighting? They don't seemed to concerned about all the mercury in those bulbs. Heck, every office building I've ever been in uses florescent lighting as well. Its not like florescent lighting has been around for almost 100 years, oh wait, it has.

Why do people complain about CLFs when we have been using other types of florescent lighting for so long? Those bulbs in office buildings and hospitals even contain more mercury, but are larger so that is obvious.

Mercury is not the only metal that leads to birth defects. Also, the problems Mexico having to do with mercury has nothing to do with florescent lighting or coal power. Mexico still today use mercury for the manufacture of jewelery and in goldsmithing as well as other industrial processes and have no laws whatsoever governing the handling and disposal of said mercury.

 

[Guest]

This isn't a new idea, was able to buy lamps like this in Australia a couple of years ago, don't recall brand, probably China made, have in bathroom. Bright at start, get brighter as CFL warms up and then a minute or so later slightly dimmer as halogen turns off. I liked them.

 

[ivanlucrazy]

Wow there are so many dumb comments! I live in Belarus, so we get the lower quality CFL's. It doesn't take 5 minutes to warm up, more like 30 seconds. Worried about mercury? If you can't handle the bulb without breaking it, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place! Sure it would be a problem in, as some people have mentioned, "A closed environment" , yet unless you are taking them out and dropping them, there is really no chance of them breaking. I had plenty of halogen bulbs explode from time to time, never with a CFL. And honestly, it seems to me that the people who complain are the ones who are too lazy to recycle bad bulbs properly. I mean come on, what do we do with car batteries? What about Freon ? Radiator fluid? Oil? We recycle it , is a bulb that much harder? The idiocy of this world surprises me. It really does.

 

[wild9]

[citation][nom]thechief73[/nom]I never really caught on to CFL, I dont know if its my bad luck or what but even the name-brand ones usually dont last a year in my house, ontop of that I cannot stand the light characteristics, I feel like in in some kind of scientific lab, not my house. And with them not lasting(At least for me) the years the are supposed to, the price premium and the fact they have mercury in them doesnt seem to be helping the environment too much besides the power savings. I am all for LED as long as they can make the light look less sterile than the CFL.[/citation]

Pretty much sums up my feelings regarding these devices. I find the lighting sub-standard and very fatiguing compared to conventional bulbs. Stick a conventional one in the room and most people have said to me they instantly feel more at home with it; indeed, my computer room uses these older one's (I know, I know..he's evil, he's destroying the planet blah bloody blah), but I just can't be doing with these CFL devices until they improve to the point where you cannot tell the difference.

However, I never really worried about how long it takes to warm up..maybe I struck lucky and get better-quality one's.

 

[Supertrek32]

I can always see the "flashing" of lightbulbs like this. Doesn't give me a headache like it does for some people, but it's pretty annoying.

 

[yao]

Only if the bulbs last longer. They don't last long before they refuses to work and dumping them is even more difficult. I love to conserve energy, but this thing gives me trouble.

 

[Guest]

I use CFL but they never last that long for me. I buy the brightest expensive ones that are supposed to be comparable to 100watt. Usually I get 6 months out of them, I don't get it. Just two of them I have noticed causes the lights switch to spark inside and I have gone through two light switches also in this same room. Do these things have a high starting power? Or whats up with them? This room only has two light's and for my desired brightness I would need 2 200watt incandescence lights and the sockets are only rated at 60.

 

[techguy378]

Toms Hardware was totally wrong about a previous story. Those $20 GE brand LED bulbs never made it to Home Depot. They ended up at Fred Meyer.

As for CFL bulbs, it would be nice if someone would make a 3 way daylight (6500K) bulb. Even though current LED bulbs are supposed to be that god awful yellowish soft white light (about 2900K), they look a lot more like daylight bulbs.

 

[Nimmist]

[citation][nom]ivanlucrazy[/nom] Worried about mercury? If you can't handle the bulb without breaking it, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place! Sure it would be a problem in, as some people have mentioned, "A closed environment" , yet unless you are taking them out and dropping them, there is really no chance of them breaking. [/citation]
Can’t say how Belarus treats toxic substances, but I did link the EPA’s guild line for CLF clean-up. I have broken several CLFs while screwing them in, they are more fragile than incandescent bulbs. Saying there is no chance of them breaking under normal use is utterly false.
[citation][nom]ivanlucrazy[/nom] And honestly, it seems to me that the people who complain are the ones who are too lazy to recycle bad bulbs properly. I mean come on, what do we do with car batteries? What about Freon ? Radiator fluid? Oil? We recycle it , is a bulb that much harder? The idiocy of this world surprises me. It really does. [/citation]
Or there is not a recycling plant available. I don’t have one near me. As for automotive fluids, any of the numerous garages will take care of them safely and there is generally one not more than a mile away. Not true for CFL recycling, this is why they usually end up in land fill. As I’ve said, give us the choice and let us decide which we want.

 

[techguy378]

[citation][nom]Nimmist[/nom]Can’t say how Belarus treats toxic substances, but I did link the EPA’s guild line for CLF clean-up. I have broken several CLFs while screwing them in, they are more fragile than incandescent bulbs. Saying there is no chance of them breaking under normal use is utterly false.Or there is not a recycling plant available. I don’t have one near me. As for automotive fluids, any of the numerous garages will take care of them safely and there is generally one not more than a mile away. Not true for CFL recycling, this is why they usually end up in land fill. As I’ve said, give us the choice and let us decide which we want.[/citation]
There are some CFL shop lite bulbs from GE that say on the packaging that they don't require any special disposal because they only contain trace amounts of mercury. If this can be done with those tube shaped shop lite bulbs then why can't it be done for the coil shaped CFL bulbs used inside the home?