LED light bulbs

As some, perhaps all of you, already know, the low-wattage fluorescent light bulbs contain traces of mercury. In listening to a number of the Leo Laporte technology shows over the weekends, there have been several mentions of LED (light-emitting diode) light bulbs available from this company, which contain no mercury:

http://www.ccrane.com/

Here are the two links having to do with LED light bulbs available from this company:

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

http://www.ccrane.com/geobulb/index.aspx

While the LED bulbs are more expensive than the low-wattage fluroescent bulbs, I believe them to be much safer, especially living in earthquake country, as is true for me!

Btw, I have no experience at all with this company, having never purchased a product from them. But one of my friends did purchase a radio from them several years ago, and he was very, very happy!

It looks like the technology is not there for general use lighting just yet; it was mostly task lighting and lighting in places a lot of lumins aren't required. It seems like they don't yet put out enough light.

I am keeping an eye on this technology though.

I think the new LED lights are great. They use a fraction of the power that CFLs (compact fluorescents) use, and they never contain mercury. But like Melodi said, they haven't really started rolling them out for general room lighting, and they're significantly more expensive than CFLs (which are still more expensive than incandescents).

Of course, they're making CFLs without mercury as well. You can find them if you search hard enough. Typically, CFLs without mercury will proclaim that fact on the packaging somewhere.

There's one other "gotcha" to the CFLs that people don't mention much. Namely, they only save money for lights you leave on, and in fact tend to burn out fairly quickly if you turn them on and off all the time. For instance, incandescents are still more cost effective in closets, or anywhere else that you only need light momentarily. Most CFLs can't handle dimmers either, but they are making some that can.