re: Are LED bulbs really worth the investment?

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No one knows if they last that much longer because they've only been out a couple of years, but they are rated to and they put out a much better and brighter light.

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No, they've been around in several fashions for decades, just not in the form we use to replace incandescents and not much in consumer products. In the industrial world we have used them for indicators for quite some time (probably 2 decades, maybe more). Worst possible usage for a bulb. On and off frequently, often flashing, thousands of cycles, even ten or hundrends of thousands of cycles. Of the thousands of bulbs I've seen put in over the past 20 or so years, I've seen probably fewer than 10 replaced other than for damage. I saw more incandescants replaced in the first year I was working.

The biggest problems for the current bulbs is the power related electronics, not the LEDs themselves.

ETA: I agree the light quality and color is far superior to Flourescent and somewhat equivilant to incandescents. And they are significantly lower power users.