Stocking up on incandescent light bulbs and now hear about the led ones

There are now four main types of household lighting. Incandescent bulbs are the ones most people are familiar with which contain a thin filament in a vacuum which is heated to white heat by the current. They are quite inefficient and use more energy to produce a certain amount of light than all the other types (most of the energy is used up in generating heat). A more efficient type of incandescent bulb is the halogen bulb. These are incandescent bulbs with a hot wire filament but the bulb is filled with a gas called halogen which allows the filament to reach a higher temperature, giving off more light for the energy used. In order to reduce energy usage, many governments are now encouraging the use of compact mercury vapour/fluorescent bulbs which use only about 1/5 of the energy of an incandescent bulb to produce the same amount of light. These contain a very small amount of mercury and are only dangerous when broken. Even then, the amount of mercury one bulb contains is so small that there is very little danger at all in normal circumstances. The problems will arise, however, if these bulbs are not properly recycled and are thrown away with the general rubbish in land fill. Encouraging efficient energy use is one thing but, by not making proper provision for the safe disposal of these bulbs, many governments are doing far more harm than good by promoting them. The fourth type of bulb is the LED bulb. LED bulbs do not contain mercury but they do contain small amounts of rare metals which, though not dangerous, are expensive. LED stands for 'light-emitting diode' and the LED type bulbs are made up (usually) of twenty or so small, low voltage solid-state lights just like those you often see now as Christmas lights and as indicators in almost all electronic equipment. They are very safe and energy-efficient and usually last for thousands of hours of use. They are generally found as replacements for spotlights and less often used for general lighting.

I had used all my old bulbs and had a hard time finding the ones I like--incandescent bulbs are cheap, I like the light they emit and they last longer than the stupid curly bulbs. I don't know about LED but I hope they are better than the curlies, which usually burn out within weeks whereas an incandescent bulb will last me for months. I hear that the LED bulbs will go down in price in the next year or so, so you might want to be patient.