One of my dollar store CFLs died last night. I had put it into service to provide some small amount ambient light in my home office when working at the computer. It worked well for this application (they being as weak as they are), but this puts its lifespan at something severely below the 10,000 hours one can expect on average from CFLs.

The moral of the story is this: When you upgrade your ancient, energy-wasting incandescent lights to CFLs, spend the extra 67 cents and get ones that work as advertised.