Olin Lathrop wrote:
>
> > No, actually it IS an evil conspiracy. If I can add
> > a 50 cent resistor and get multi-year bulb lifes, but
> > the bulb manufacturers want to keep selling products
> > they KNOW fail after a few weeks, it would be insane
> > to believe that they are not aware of the problem,
> > and the massive profits that problem brings them.
>
> The series resistor makes the overall apparatus much less efficient.  There
> are "long life" bulbs that have a somewhat less efficient but more durable
> filament, sorta like your resistor but designed into the bulb.


It really only makes the bulb 5% less efficient.
As the bulb filament has a negative coefficient
the resistor only loses a few percent in terms of
energy loss and brightness loss when the bulb is
running. BUT, it has a massive effect on startup
power surge when the filament is cold. So you get
greatly extended bulb life (20x) for very little
efficiency loss.

> There are enough independant bulb manufacturers in the world that if the
> series resistor was a good idea and people really wanted to buy it, that
> someone would manufacture such a thing.

I think this is an "engineers" point of view, as
any bean counter will desperately continue making
bulbs that fail often, knowing full well that the
real profits come from repeated sales, and not from
making everlasting bulbs.


> I think the real solution is to
> migrate to different light emitting technologies, which is already
> happening.  I think we'll see some interesting changes over the next 10
> years.


With this I agree wholeheartedly. It will be a huge
shakeup to the "evil empire" light bulb manufacturers
when led lights come on to the market that last for
10 to 20 years. And use a lot less power per lumen.
How will they possibly cope? End of an era.
-Roman

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