From everything I've seen and read you need to be cleaver in their placement if the plant is over 1' in height. Say with a tomato have a couple over the top and several standing vertically around the plant.

Yes, regular fluorescents will work for growing plants. It works very well for lettuce and can work well for tomatoes. But tomatoes are a very high-energy plant which means they need a lot of high-energy light. So that means lots of bulbs.

You can get by with less while they're younger (lots of people use regular shop lights to start seedlings in the late winter to get a jumpstart on the growing season). But you'll either need a few big fluorescents later or a bunch of small ones.

Mix "Daylight" and "Warm light" bulbs for fruit-bearing plants like tomatoes, or straight Daylight bulbs for lettuce. The daylight ones are better for leaf development so plants that are all leaf do fine with that. The others need a more full spectrum.

The advantage the expensive grow lights have is the better light penetration - the light goes through the plant better to give energy to the lower leaves. Since fluorescents don't penetrate as well you often need side lighting to keep the lower parts of the plant healthy. The upside is that regular light bulb style fluorescents, the CFLs, work great for growing and are perfect for this application.

There's a lot of versatility in CFLs.

Just remember you're never going to have as much light and therefore as much growth as you would with a big HID grow light.

Thanks for the help guys!