However, it seems quite plausible that the different spectrum of LEDs could affect the perceived brightness, particularly if you're wanting the diffuse reflection from LED spotlights to act as ambient lighting.
Cree has popped up a number of times in technical articles as a leader in white LEDs. Their product focus is on recessed lighting:
http://www.creeledlighting.com/residential.htm
The photo in the NY Times article is of Philips' entry into the L Prize. Time Magazine has a short blurb on the bulb, albeit light on information (pun not intended):
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...
My best guess is that 2010 will be a good year to start dipping your toes in LED lights for around the house. If I owned my own house, I would probably get the Cree recessed lights today. I enjoy a well lit house, and turning lights on and off to save energy annoys me. I welcome the day that I have my own solar panels, LED lights, and solar tube lighting.
The halogens are $7 and 1280 lumens. No contest really. Especially when I have 6 of them.
And a camping headlight.
I consider these two things to be of the coolest things I own. They definitely show off proper LED application.
For the camping headlight, which wasn't very cheap, I don't have to worry about disrupting the darkness too much. And the batteries will last forever.
For the lamp, same thing. It is a wonderful feeling staying up till 5 in the morning with nothing but you, the lamp, and your work. Nothing but the desk and your work is illuminated, and it is illuminated very pleasantly, which is awesome.
So, depending on the application, those negatives are strong positives. I can't imagine the LEDs being used as household lighting.
There are very good LED lamps out there, built with high efficiency, high brightness LEDs, but they are expensive.
It really is a pity. I've been experimenting with multiwatt LEDs for some time (individual, unpackaged units) for a little off-grid experiment I have going and they are scary bright! But at the consumer level, there is nothing available at low cost that is useful.
Anyway, they've come a long way since then. Probably not long enough to buy them next time you change your bulbs, but they're a lot better than they used to be.
The issue is, they look bright when you look at them, but they actually provide absolutely no actual light. Even when we had 7 of them, the room was almost pitch black. I actually think it's a bit of a con to even sell these things, knowing they are unusable for most applications.
>> "While it is indisputable that LEDs use a fraction of the electricity of a regular bulb to create the same amount of light,"
I'm not sure on how they measure 'same amount of light', because all of the energy saving lights I've ever seen are absolutely no where near as bright as standard lights. Which is a shame.
just my 2c