CFLs vary a lot in quality. I like them BRIGHT and as close to daylight spectrum as possible. To get what I want I've started stocking up when on visits to Turkey, since the CFLs you can get there are far higher quality (both in the kind of light they put out and in their reliability) than anything you can buy in the UK. I'm not sure if they're actually made in Turkey - it may just be that Turkey imposes tougher requirements on Chinese manufacturers than the UK does.