On Wed, 02 May 2007 14:53:09 GMT, Jose
wrote:

Interesting. It sort of makes you wonder why this new technology was
finally deployed after over a hundred years of incandescent lamp
production and on-going development.

There are tradeoffs. For example, cost, bulb life, color, stuff like that.

Including providing an omnidirectional source in the way an Edison
bulb does. Also, "daylight" color in both LEDs and CFLs means a color
temperature around 3000 Kelvin, rather than 5-6000 K, like you'd get
from the sun or a halogen.

On the other hand, having an omnidirectional source is a mixed
blessing at best. I had an intereting briefing with Cree the other
week where the fellow I was talking to was pointing out the advantages
of full-spectrum LED lighting in parking garages and outdoor lighting,
and I asked him about response from the astronomy community, which
tends to prefer sodium vapor, with it's easy-to-filter narrow spectrum
lines. He said Cree works with the Dark Sky folks and that IDA is
actually pretty cool with directional outdoor lighting. There may be a
lighting paradigm shift on the way.

Don