Do I treat compact fluorescents like regular fluorescents for energy conservation?

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This is kinda low tech for this forum, but I don't feel like joining a new forum just for a simple question.

When I was in school decades ago, they used to teach about energy conservation tips. At the time the only compact florescent light bulbs were those torpedo shaped cylinders that screwed into a regular light socket that looked like tiny versions of regular florescent tubes.
Not like the modern twisted spiral bulbs (though they still sell the torpedo shaped ones).

In school, they told us that if you were leaving the room for ten minutes or less, whether or not to turn the lights off depended on the type.
If it was florescent, you should leave them on since they take more power to turn on.
If it was an incandescent, you should turn it off even if only for a few minutes.

What about these new modern compact floresenets? Do I treat them like an incandescent or a florescent when say I'm leaving the computer room to go to the bathroom, or get a snack, or even just refill my glass?
I have many years of habits of turning off the light, but should I break that now that I'm using the new CPF bulbs?

 

What you learned in school was true about thirty years ago (it's far too common for schools to teach obsolete tech stuff twenty years too long).

Turn them off. I don't turn any light off when I leave for minute or two -- most bulbs have a lifespan which is a combination of cycles and duration. So the off-and-on for one or two minute cycles is bad for any bulb. But five to ten minutes is fine to turn them off.

 

Well, I learned it in school 20-30 years ago (elementary, junior high, and high all taught it), so it's not exactly the school's fault.

I've been staying with my mother since she had a nasty fall in June. She can't go into the basement to use the washing machine, and most of the light fixtures are 30 years old. We also have a lot of incandescents that my depression-era grandfather had stockpiled from when ComEd used to give out free light bulbs if you paid the bill in person instead of mailing it.
They are just now starting to run out, and he died in 1999.
There are some fixtures that the CPF don't fit too well in, so I'm phasing in CPF for the fixtures it does fit in, and hording the last dozen 60W incandescents.

Although we're not sure what we're going to do with the 200W incandescents, we don't have anything that isn't a 3-way that uses anything over 100W, most are 60W with a few 40W.

 

They make CPF equivalent to 200 watts -- I have two in my garage. CPF's are coming in all sizes now -- there isn't a light fixture I can't find a CPF to fit, and their getting cheaper now.

 

No, I meant that I had no use for the 200w incandescent bulbs because the only fixtures where they would be used are 3-way lamps and I use 3-way bulbs in them. I don't need more 200w-only bulbs.

I haven't seen 3-way CPF.

 

They're out there, I just bought one from Lowes -- but your lamp needs to be able to work with CPF's, mine didn't. If your lamp is ten or so years old it may not work with the CPF three-way either.

 

The lamp is something I took from grandma's house in 1999. It was there all my life. My mother says grandpa got it when SHE was in high school.
It's probably more like 50 years than 10.

No, all these lamps both mine and mom's are standard incandescent 3-ways. None are newer than ~1991, when I think the one on the end table had to be replaced because the old one shorted out.
I'm thinking of both mom's stuff and my stuff. Mine is mostly in storage. I haven't had a steady job sine April, and I moved in with mom in June after she had an accident and needed assisted living.
She is recovering, and now the only thing she can't do is the laundry because she can't make half a dozen trips up and down the stairs, and the yardwork. The leaves are going to start falling this month, but I've been doing the leaves since I was a kid.
but I still haven't had anything but short-term temp jobs since April, so I'm not moving out until I get a permanent job.