Compact Fluorescents

Insty links to this article about “swirls”.
I agree in principle with the idea of converting from incandescent to fluorescent, but I still have two problems with even the current “swirl” bulbs:
1. They don’t last as long as they claim — at least not in my experience. I have yet to have one last as long as two or three years under constant use.
2. They don’t come up instantly. There’s still a non-trivial warmup period before the light is useful, and even then the color is “off”.
In mitigation to #1: Perhaps our electricity here is too “surgey” — which would not surprise me, I’ve seen the input voltage for my UPSes swing from 116 to 124 volts in a short period of time, particularly now that it’s summer and folks are using air conditioning. (Voltage usually drops precipitously around 5-6PM, when people come home and crank the air down after being gone all day.) This problem might be solvable by installing a whole-house surge protector.
In mitigation to #2: I’ve noticed that higher-end swirls don’t have this problem. For instance, the swirls Marriott is using in their hotels have a very short warmup period. I did some research and found the specific ones being used at the Couryard in New Carrollton, MD, at http://www.servicelighting.com/catalog_product.cfm?prod=TC18029 — but they’re $11.53 each. I can buy half a dozen consumer-grade swirls for less than that at Lowe’s. In all fairness the TC18029 is a 3100K, 1750 lumens, 27W monster (probably a 100-150W replacement) whereas the ones I buy cheap at Lowe’s are 2700K, 800 lumens, 13W and are a 60W replacement. But I’ve bought the inexpensive 100W replacements, too, and never been happy with them, either. I suspect this is more a light temperature difference than anything else.
You’d actually be surprised but the difference between a 2700K and a 3100K lamp is significant. This is something we old film photographers are aware of but lightbulb consumers are just getting around to grasping. Even though so-called “soft-white” incandescents run about 2700K, the “warm” 2700K fluorescent bulbs aren’t bright enough to make most of us happy. (My guess is that the good Professor would be happier with “cooler” — that is, higher light temperature — swirls.)
The unfortunate tradeoff is that the quality of the light is just plain different — the whole spectrum is not represented in the light generated by this type of lamp, so colors don’t look the same under fluorescent light. We all know that — we’ve all walked into a store, bought something of a particular color, and discovered we didn’t like the color anymore once we brought it home. The lighting makes all the difference.
But my biggest beef with the cost of lighting is not the actual per-watt cost. It’s the fact that my wife is constitutionally unable to turn lights off when she leaves a room. YMMV.