EU outlaws incandescent bulbs by 2012

Costco once had them for under a buck but that price was subsidized. Philips Marathon, the good stuff. In contrast to my earlier encounters with CFL these seem to really last.

My stuff hasn't shown up there yet. Still working on that :-)

Very different across the country. Here in California they carry a lot of cheap plastic stuff, I don't go there anymore. Back east, very different. Got 10ft of coax for a buck and similar items there.

Well, does 'it' cost ten times more, or five times more? Oh, I must have underestimated the stupidity of the masses!

I just picked up some there, made for Sunbeam. They are 11 watt, and claim to work down to -5 F. They are long thin bulbs, like the double lamp in bug zappers.

I also have some 1.5 W LED lamps that I bought for the fixtures on my gate posts. They came from a flea market tool dealer, and were $4 each.

They had some about two years ago. I bought one then. The new ones are the same, except you can get them in Black or Silver. I bought five of them. I tend to drop things more these days, due to carpal tunnel, & nerve damage in my hands. Remotes don't last too long, anymore. :(

Nah. $5. They screwed up, and had to dump them. :)

Canned goods, candy & pasta, but nothing frozen in the Dollar Tree stores around here. I did pick up a dozen 4 oz. bags of beef jerky for a buck each. I like to use it in vegetable beef soup. It gives it a smoky flavor. :)

Wal-Mart used to have sugar free pies, and more things made for diabetics, but there was very little there, the other day. There isn't much else there that I can't find closer to home.

Yes. Big Lots/Odd Lots used to be, as well. Some thrift stores can be interesting, as well. Several collect computers & parts for me, and give me other electronics that they can't test. I got a nice 100 channel Radio Shack scanner last year. It didn't work, because someone had turned off all ten banks of 10 channels. I picked up a Midland weather radio at another for $5. It not only worked, but was already programmed for my area. The alert has been activated a few times.

Hi Michael,

Do let us know how well they work...

It seems like every flea market has to have at least one guy selling flashlights and LED bulbs these days. :-)

Just last week or so there was some discussion of the ceramic resonators in the things breaking... do you know if that's the usual failure mode?

In Florida it probably takes enough extra energy to run the freezers they can't make any money on frozen goods!

I visit Big Lots occasionally, but it's more because they're sometimes have something a little different/unique -- the prices never struck me as being all that great.

There are only a couple local ones, and they're very heavy on the clothing! Back when I was in Portland the pickings were much better for electronics...

---Joel

It won't be long after that when LED lighting is cost effective. I expect it to have pretty much displaced all domestic lighting by 2020

Only with the collusion of tyrannical governments.

Thanks, Rich

Nah. The usual failure mode is stuff like V-8 juice getting in. Seriously. Then contact material of the buttons rubbing off, and pets getting a hold of it are probably number three. Oh, and uncle Leroy plopping himself onto the sofa where the remote was laying.

Number five is probably "the smack". Remote being tossed across the room when Manchester United got socked.

With the high rate of LED failures? Some of the LED 'bulbs' around here have already been replaced twice. The red lights seem to fail the fastest. A few months after they are installed, strings of LEDs either get dim, or fail. Not only that, but the damn things radiate all kinds of RF noise. Some affect AM radio for over a half mile.

I have never spilled anything into a remote.

No worn buttons, and no pets.

i don't think that any of my uncles are still alive.

Not going to happen. I don't watch sports anymore. The last thing i could watch was NASCAR, and now it puts me to sleep.

I will.

This place sells a few flashlights, but they have about eight booths full of tools. They got a small batch from one of their wholesalers, and I got a few before they were all gone.

I did buy a nice LED flashlight at Northern Tools the other day. It has 95 white LEDs (Where is Watson a name, these days? He was always building his own.)

That, or the stores a re smaller. They are crowded, with narrow isles.

They were a lot better, 25 years ago. They started in Ohio under the 'Odd Lots' name about that time, and were true liquidators.

Where are you, these days?

Gotta be replaced with a CFL which will last one month at those temps; this waste keeps industry going.

Why?

Yes; like i said, a new one every month because the CFL is a "feature" meaning welded in place.

Oh, this is better yet! The CFL acts as a secondary RF generator tuned especially to radiate thru the seals and zap your pacemaker!

Someone must have LED you astray on this one...

Arc lamps here...

Groups of LEDs fail. Maintenance is called out. It doesn't matter if its a diagnostic indicator or just a bunch of crappy LEDs.

The high failure rates and RF noise may be the sign of immature LED technology and/or poor design. That's why we get paid the big bucks. To come up with something better.

OK, the bucks aren't that big and its someone in China getting them. But its the idea that counts.

There are exemptions covering these applications. So I suppose you could relamp you entire hose with 25W appliance lamps.

However, I'm anticipating that newer appliances will be designed with alternatives to incandescent lighting. LEDs in fridges and freezers. Microwaves and ovens designed with some sort of 'light pipe' to keep temperature sensitive light sources separate from the high temperature. Eventually, the specialty incandescent lamps will be difficult to find and too expensive to use for general lighting.

On a sunny day (Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:02:04 GMT) it happened Richard The Dreaded Libertarian wrote in :

The large corporations own the government. Money buys anything, see for example:

He just was a bit too obvious.

Makes you wonder how much Obama payed for that seat....

hehe

Actually it is not a bad thing, that way inovation is kept alive.

No, that's not a failure mode, that's how I get my TV remote to work in the first place. Turns out that a forceful (just short of painful) rap on the kneecap is the right thing. Wood is too hard.

robert

Because they want to be able to quickly replace incandescents in older-style traffic lights without having to immediately convert the whole thing to LED in case of a spontaneous lamp failure.

Um, no.

robert

Then you aren't old enough.

Hmm, maybe you are older.

You are definitely old ;-)

Hi Michael,

Southern Oregon... work is in Grants Pass, 58 miles north of the border of Kali-for-ni-a.

---Joel

Agreed, but this is the "death of a thousand cuts" problems. Why are taxes so high? Well, you just raise them a liitttllleee bit at a time, and it's no big deal, right? But over time it all amounts to something.

There's a lot more of this "nickel and diming" going on today with government: Many services that used to be "free" -- after paying your taxes -- now have various small filing/processing fee, etc. Most annoying, but these days taxes are so high the government finds it easier to implement such fees rather than raising taxes.