At 12:22 PM 5/26/2004 +1200, you wrote:
> >         If a white LED burns out or dims out after a few hundreds or
> > thousands of hours, it isn't that much of an improvement over a small
> > incandescent bulb except maybe for the energy efficiency factor.
>
>FWIW a good LED is not more efficient than the best incandescent bulbs
>(generally higher wattage halogens) and a good smaller bulb can be of
>similar efficiency - notwithstanding general belief to the contrary :-)

I have white LEDs that are fairly bright (as an indicator) at 1mA average
and a few volts. That's pretty low compared to most incandescents.

Also high efficiency (hot) incandescent bulbs have shorter life and are
probably more sensitive to vibration. Failure through slow degradation
may be more acceptable in some cases (flashlight? aircraft instrument
panel lighting?) than sudden failure.

Compact fluorescents are still more efficient than (most?) LEDs, and
far cheap for 10 or 20W input power, so I think it's going to be a long
time before LEDs are used for general illumination, but it is getting
closer.

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

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