Laurie Solomon wrote in response to Andy Darlow: > > The question is not only color temperature of the tubes but what their color > rendering index is as well. to be color corrected they should have a color > rendering index of at least 97 as well as a 5000 to 5500 K color > temperature. If you want a cheaper replacement for a Solux halogen, you may be hard pressed to find anything near a CRI of 97. A Vita-Lite Plus fluorescent (either as a task lamp fixture, or as a screw in Spiralux) has a CRI of 92 (I think that GE and Philips C50s are about the same). There are some fluorescents out there with CRIs between 94 to 98, but they may not be available in task light form. These are normally available in 4 foot lengths, with each tube being $10 to $30 from specialized companies, with the cheapest bare bulb fixture (electronic ballast for 2 T8 tubes) being about $30 to $40 at Home Depot The 5000K screw-in bulbs with funny color casts that Andy Darlow described probably have CRIs in the range of 82 to 88. -- Ben Haskell - Please turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for instructions.