By Blaine Harden Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, April 30, 2007; Page A01
NESKOWIN, Ore. -- Alex and Sara Sifford, who live here on the Oregon coast, want to do the right thing to save a warming world.
To that end, Alex Sifford, 51, has been buying compact fluorescent light bulbs . . . He sneaks them into sockets all over the house. This has been driving his wife nuts. . . . the bulbs, with their initial flicker, slow warm-up and slightly weird color, bug her. . . . Experts on energy consumption call it the "wife test." And one of the dimly lighted truths of the global-warming era is that fluorescent bulbs still seem to be flunking out in most American homes. . . . A key to the abiding grass-roots resistance to CFLs, Reed and other experts said, is indelible consumer memories of the hideous looks and poor quality of earlier generations of fluorescent lights. . . . "People remember them from 20 years ago and they are not going to forgive," said Dave Shiller, vice president of new business development for MaxLite, a Fairfield, N.J., company that manufactures CFL bulbs.
(That's about all I can post and feel comfortable that I am staying within the "fair use" copyright exception - I'll post the URL to the much longer and complete article below although I believe that registration is still required )-: even though it's still free (-:)
FWIW, my N-vision CFL floodlight has begun to take a very long time to warm up and appears never able to reach its initial brightness level. Too bad, because it looked like a real winner at first. My wife wants it gone from the kitchen! I concur. Slow warmup is really, really annoying when you want to look at something right away.
-- Bobby G.