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Better common light bulbs
In another current thread the subject of the long life flourescent screw in light bulbs came up. We are kinda Johhny Come Lately's with all this and just started replacing the ordinary bulbs with the new "Curly Fry Bulbs" as the grand daughter calls them about a year ago. Energy saving potential was a factor, but our biggest reason for changing was that the common light bulbs we had been using seemed to burn out about as fast as we could replace them. For the most part we haven't replaced but one or two of the new ones. So my question is, is there a source of better quality common light bulbs that don't burn our so often? Thanks. Frank.
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Better common light bulbs
Our house has lots of 75W halogen floods that are about $6/bulb and they don't seem to last very long. GE makes a magnetic resonance bulb that that works as a replacement and only uses around 20 watts. I bought one to try since these cost about $30 each but are supposed to last thousands of hours. It starts sort of slow with an amber light but after a minute it is white and bright. I was a little bugged in the fine print to find that the brightness declined linearly and the rated output was about half brightness halfway through it's lifespan. If they were $5 I'd replace all of the halogens but not at six times that price.
I have had good luck with some other GE bulbs that are sold with the "Capsulite" name. They work well in high ceiling fans and last about 3 times longer than normal incandescents and the price is not too bad.
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Better common light bulbs
Do those curly Q light bulbs actually put out the wattage claimed? Also wondered if they lasted as stated.
Some years back Consumers Power in our area came around to all the elderly and replaced the light bulbs free of charge with some energy efficient ones. The bulbs didn't put out half the light and it was so dark in the house they couldn't see. They actually fell over a few things and almost stumbled down the basement steps before I got to replace the bulbs.
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Better common light bulbs
I have just started on this also. My pet peave is that my kids leave all the high hat halogen lights on upstairs, then leave and leave 750 watts burning all day.
I have replaced some with dimmable compact flourescent flood lights, others with non dimmable.
The CFL come in different brightnesses. The soft white are too weak for me. The bright white are pretty good, unfortunately I could only find the dimmable in soft white.
These bulbs also require warm up time so they are not appropriate for bathrooms or over the kitchen sink where you want instant on. The other thing I notice is that the floods don't offer much daytime functionality and the beam is very diffuse. Don't know about the life of the them is either yet. I am mostly using them where we habitually forget to turn lights off.
In the garage I put the 120 Watt curly bright white CFL and it is much better than the halogen bulb I had in there.
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Better common light bulbs
Even though I'm pretty good at turning off unused lights, there are many spots in the house, especially this time of year when it's dark at 4:30pm, where we just like some lights on, rather than living in a cave. Because of the size of the house, and the high ceilings, even more lights are required to make the place bright enough to be livable. Add to that the fact that my gal likes to stay in one end of the house and read & play the piano, and I stay back in my den and "the bare minimum" lights are most of the lights in the house!! 
I started a few years back swapping a bunch of the incandescent bulbs with CFL's.
The first thing I noticed was, as Dennis mentioned, the colour has a bearing on perceived brightness, a soft white bulb needs to be higher wattage than the bright white in order to be able to see the same under both.
I also gave up on the CFL tri-light bulbs, I just figured out what light level we used and replaced them with a regular CFL of the same wattage we used the tri-light bulb on.
The other thing I did was in places where I just flip the light on & off while I'm in the room, such as the powder room off the den or the garage, I replaced either the switch or fixture with a motion sensing model. If I walk in the light goes on, after (a settable) amount of minutes after it lasts detects motion (or an IR target if you're prone to reading  ) it turns the lights back off for you automatically.
Of all the bulbs I've replaced with CFL's so far, only the tri-lights, and a failed attempt at using them in a ceiling fan (they need special vibration proof models for that, really rare) all but one of them are still working fine.
The outdoor one that died did so as a result of yours truly and Deputy Dog engaging in some horse play that went horribly wrong...... but that's another story.
Best of luck.
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Better common light bulbs
I use halogens outside, because I want instant full brilliancy and out in the cold that may take some time to happen. Is anyone concerned about the mercury that will end up in landfills from increased CFL use? I also heard that when CFL's expire they tend to smoke at the base which is apparently normal though unnerving for a first-time user.
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Better common light bulbs
Anyone use low-voltage lighting? I have installed them under my kitchen cabinets and above the kitchen sink. They work great. I'm not sure if there is any energy savings with them, because the transformer itself uses some energy, right? But for instant on capability and brightness, they're spot on.
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Better common light bulbs
We have low voltage halogens and rope lights in and below our kitchen cabinets. They're really nice for putting light exactly where you need it but the halogens sure don't save any energy. Those suckers get hot. They're great for pre-warming the dinner plates though 
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Better common light bulbs
I remember reading somewhere that if you have trouble with bulbs burning out buy ones that are 130 volt rated rather than 120 volt. Yes you can buy them. It will not save you any money but may make replacement less frequent. I don't know about cost comparison, but I don't think it is a huge amount more.
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Better common light bulbs
Thanks for all the replies,it is much appreciated. As I said in the original post our main reason for going to the CF's was to avoid frequent burnouts. That part seems to be working. For example in my office the center overhead fixture has a three bulb arrangment, with the grocery store incandescants we replaced one of the three at least every ten days, in a year since going to the CF's all three are still working. so that part was a succcess. What with all the disposal problems and all I'm going to take Denwoods advice and look for the 130 volt rated common bulbs. Frank.
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