Hi, I'm new to LightingGallery.net and can see alot of people here hate the newer generation Thorn Popular Packs. It seems that the change to lighter, poorer quality built light fixtures ties in quite nicely with Zumtobel taking over Thorn. such a shame, the build of the Popular Packs was much stronger prior to the early 1990's.
There was a time when you could probably knock someone out with a Popular Pack if you hit them over the head with it! I doubt that would be the case now, probably fold in half!!
A while ago saw some Zumtobel fittings in a warehouse that looked a bit like 1970's double Popular Packs with T8 lamps and battens - I thought they looked a bit like PP's and looking at Zumtobel on the internet made it all clear! 

They were certainly responsible for the transition to crap quality, cheaply made products. Sometimes I wish that Thorn Lighting had died along with the whole company at the end of the 90s really.

Some of the fittings are alright still but they're gradually getting worse, I should think the arrowslim is due for an upgrade soon and no doubt that will be HF gear only and made out of plastic or something stupid.

Dont you mean due for a down grade eliot! You are def correct Paul they have gone down the pan i really dont think there are any fitting that thorn make that are any good! A Stratus Flood light is far better than a new SON PAK. That would never of been the case when they were making the fiberglass type, Nothing beats them!

I've recently discovered that our new work building is entirely lit by dimmable HF T5HO fittings tied into daylight matching systems and motion detectors...and the whole system is made by Zumtobel.  We'll see how that goes, but I don't have high hopes!

Reckon it will keep our maintenance department far more on their toes than the old F20/40 T12 Quickstarts we currently have!

The strong mechanical design is one side, but I had frequently problems attaching heavier fixtures on many surfaces (lately Ytong "bricks") - the material is simply not able to hold anything heavier, so the fixture should be lightweight. Then there you have two options: Or use many "incandescent" fixtures with CFL's and/or lightweight, electronically ballasted fluorescent fixture.
And here I prefer linear tubes - when avoiding cheepee ballasts, these last way longer then the best CFL's. On top of this their energy consumption is way lower and available light quality far better (again, compare to CFL's)...

...That's one dead fixture in our corner of the office already.  The daylight matching system is at times incredibly distracting - especially its tendency to react to reflected incident lighting on the sensors from vehicles driving past!  Means that the colour temperature varies throughout the office and throughout the day too...Saves quite a bit of energy no doubt, but does look messy.

@Zelandeth: I think the behaviour you describe is an example of VERY badly designed daylight matching system. Start from incorrectly positionned sensors (it should never respond to cars on the road), end with missing filterring (it should not react to so fast changes and by fast light output changes)... In this way such concept would never gain any acceptance...

I think it is quite cool effect. i'd quite like it, except the unreliable ballasts / controls and fast EOL lamps from excessive switching

With LED instead of fluorescent it would be perfect

I think it is quite cool effect. i'd quite like it, except the unreliable ballasts / controls and fast EOL lamps from excessive switching

With LED instead of fluorescent it would be perfect

You may like it, when you are only staring on the lights and enjoy them (e.g. when relaxing). But if you have to focus on some task, such effects are VERY disturbing, so your productivity woul be terrible, what is on the bottom-line costing your employer A LOT...

Does a bird moving by the window (and making a rapid shadow), or a flickering fire in the fireplace distract that much too ? I think not really, and those controls / lights are in some sense "the modern" fire

Birds are not on the desk and those living around the office buildings are not big to cause any significant shade, while flashing light is flashing onto the working desk...
But single fly inside the office is VERY annoying...

And I haven't seen fireplaces in any office building, maybe except the closed offices of CEO or similar ranked "beasts", but I don't care about these, as only they work there themself, so it is their business...

It's not *that* fast reacting, unfortunately the traffic outside isn't particularly fast moving either!  The only time it seems to change particularly quickly is a few times per day when the whole system seems to develop a nervous twitch for a couple of minutes.  Building has only been running for a month or so now, so we'll see how things go once the bug-fixing phase has been completed.

The optimal filter time-constant in my experience is about 1 minute for increasing and 3..10minutes for decreasing light level, I guess this would be way slower then the traffic.
With this you do not notice any light changes at all, but it still offer the energy saving. And that's the purpose - with good lighting you do your work and do not think about any lighting at all (OK, unless you deliberrtelly look for it everywhere you enter :-) ). And cloud movement behind the window and related faster illumination changes are natural, so you wouuldn't notice that either...

I guess, then a bit else would be, when there are used lightpipes for daylight illumination, if they use some directional sun concentration optic. These require quite fast acting (<10sec of time constant) compensation with artificial light sources mixed with the daylight before the lens to the office, so the light entering the office from these points is kept constant - as the cloud may affect the inside light output very fast.
But lightpipes with omnidirectional input (so take the average light from the whole sky) are not as sensitive, because small clouds only diffuse the sunlight (so the total sky brightness stay the same) and big ones (really making everything dark) do not come as quickly

Not necessarily slower than traffic in the centre of Aberdeen...we have some serious flow issues, especially at peak times!

Noticed that this week the dimming feature appears to have been disabled throughout the building - everywhere's been running at 100% output.

Certainly makes the place look a lot tidier, and at least the colour temperature matches across the floor now! 

...Save for the cool-white LED downlighters scattered everywhere anyway.

Certainly makes the place look a lot tidier, and at least the colour temperature matches across the floor now! 

You want to say, then the lamp color didn't match the light coming from windows?
Then I understand the frustration, if the basic rule about comfortable lighting is not followed (all light sources in one area, except decorative spot-lights, should be of the same color - so here the lamps had to be matched to the daylight).
If you fulfill this, there would be no difference, so the eye (or brain) does not have to adopt it's "color balance", whenever you look from one side of the office to another one...