I've always had good luck with eBay, except that once when a guy said something was new, and it obviously wasn't. Negative feedback for you dickweed. Just make sure they ship discretely if that kind of thing is important to you. Some do not. I just hate it when my package gets delivered to my parent's house and the label says it's from "Cannabis and Drug Related Supply International"? I much much much prefer to go to a real store though. There are many things as or more important than price.

CFL's are wonderful, and according to the numbers they're just slightly less efficient than HID. I've seen many wonderful grows that used only fluorescent light. You just have to remember the correct colors for the stages of growth, and preferably have a mix. Plants like a spectrum. Sorry Zcomp. We usually see eye to eye, but I got to disagree about the green light thing. I realize I'm in the minority here, and I used to believe as you, but I've done a lot of reading lately about actual plant physiology rather than what stoners are saying. There is a reason for every color of the visible and invisible spectrum. Not all 16 billion or whatever, but they all work together like individuals in an ant farm or bee hive. Get rid of the ants that carry out a certain function, and the whole colony dies or at least suffers some. Green light has more uses than to bounce off plants.

Sorry, got a little off track. You can use anything to veg, but incandescents don't do so hot. Believe it or not they do pretty well at budding though, you just have to have even more shitloads of them than you do with CFL's, and that kind of set up gets real hot. What's important is when you start to bud. Then the light is critical. You'll either want as many reddish fluorescents as you can stand to buy (mixed with a little blue), or HPS, preferably mixed with less MH or a little blue fluoro. At this point there is no comparison to HPS for making the bag appeal; those deep and wide, dense, dripping, sugar frosted corn cobs. That is except perhaps for that new one you can't use yet, xenon or something? Bright as the sun or so?

One huge consideration many people seem to overlook until it's too late, is the fact that HID lighting gets hot. I always say that with HID you should plan on spending as much money on venting as you do on lighting. If you don't, make sure you don't put your ducts behind a wall like I did, cause they'll be coming back out. In my opinion this is the main advantage of fluorescent lighting, and it's a big one. Just throw a fan or two into the grow area and your venting issues are covered.

So you see, I hope, that both ways have advantages and suckinesses. Just depends on your budget, time, desires, space, etc.