On Mar 21, 2006, at 10:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

> Imagine they are turned on but leave them turned off they
> will never blow then!

I have a lot of CFLs in my home, and I haven't been very impressed
with their lifetime.  The fluorescent TUBE technology may have a
very long life, but it looks like the the electronic ballasts are
suitable to a number of early failures.  The most common failure
seems to be that the "large" filter electrolytic caps overheat and
either burst or become electrically leaky enough to cause other
components to overload.  I've had CFL bulbs emit significant smoke
as an internal resistor overloaded and gave it up, which is not a
very comfortable failure mode...

BillW
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