4 ms·

In my building, administration changed last year all the floor lamps with CFL. From a total of 19 bulbs, 2 burned out. They stay on all day long. That means 10

In my building, administration changed last year all the floor lamps with CFL. From a total of 19 bulbs, 2 burned out. They stay on all day long. That means 10% of the bulbs burned before reaching 9000 hours. The rest seems to be unaffected. However, _older_ lamps (made > 15, 20 years ago) used to last much longer than two or three years on all the time. I know this because I took notice of this at the moment. I have incandescent bulbs that are more than 10 years old, that burn 2-3 hours a day today. Incandescent bulbs I bought in the last years typically lasted less than 1-2 years at a similar burning rate. I saw a change in bulb quality when the local industry died (east Europe) and all you could get were Osram from Poland or Phillips. In my opinion, the reaches of the cartel are still strong.

gambiting 12y ago
In my opinion, people want to pay less and less each year, which leads to using cheaper materials. 15 years ago a CFL cost a very decent amount of money, I am sure that if you adjusted the price for inflation it would cost at least 4x of what they cost now. You can get a 60W-equivalent CFL for £1.50-2, which is ridiculously close to the cost of regular 60W lightbulbs(which cost £0.5-0.8 when bought in bulk).
leoedin 12y ago
It's often cheaper for manufacturers of low-cost electronics to minimally test devices before sale, with the expectation that some will die early in their life and be fixed under warranty. Burning in everything you make is expensive, especially if failure rates are fairly low anyway. Electronics tend to have a bathtub curve of failure, with high failure rates at the beginning of life. It wouldn't surprise me that older CFLs (with much higher market prices) had greater levels of testing/burn in before being shipped, leading to much lower failure rates.

4 ms·

In my building, administration changed last year all the floor lamps with CFL. From a total of 19 bulbs, 2 burned out. They stay on all day long. That means 10

by crististm 12y ago

gambiting 12y ago
In my opinion, people want to pay less and less each year, which leads to using cheaper materials. 15 years ago a CFL cost a very decent amount of money, I am sure that if you adjusted the price for inflation it would cost at least 4x of what they cost now. You can get a 60W-equivalent CFL for £1.50-2, which is ridiculously close to the cost of regular 60W lightbulbs(which cost £0.5-0.8 when bought in bulk).
leoedin 12y ago
It's often cheaper for manufacturers of low-cost electronics to minimally test devices before sale, with the expectation that some will die early in their life and be fixed under warranty. Burning in everything you make is expensive, especially if failure rates are fairly low anyway. Electronics tend to have a bathtub curve of failure, with high failure rates at the beginning of life. It wouldn't surprise me that older CFLs (with much higher market prices) had greater levels of testing/burn in before being shipped, leading to much lower failure rates.