do they go up in smoke, or just die silent?
perhaps you can open one to check where the fault is, maybe you caught a bad series 5 years ago...
i thaught they would live longer.
the ones we have changed at the production plant i work at, were mostly broken solderings due to hot/cold cycling and perhaps high frequent vibrations from the circuit.
some few had blown FETs or capacitors.
and a few failed running the tube on only very low brightness and a violet touch of color.
Overall, these were very few. Out of about 600 lamps with e-ballasts, in one year we changed maybe 15 or 20.
mixed manufacters, Siemens, Osram, AEG, Philips, ...
[This message has been edited by :andy: (edited 02-01-2004).]
