Are these decent? The F32T8 version of this dies after a few years but isn't terrible either...although IMO Advance ballasts in general have an "Advanced" failure rate compared to other brands.

"an 'Advanced' failure rate" <-- That's a good way of putting it.

Yeah ever since the PCB ban Advance ballasts have just...sorta...sucked! The older ones were tanks, though, spending decades with 34 watt lamps on 40w-only ballasts, or F32T8s!

So far so good...I installed this ballast in place of a magnetic ballast that died. One thing that was weird with this ballast when I first tried it is the 8ft lamps lit only for one second every time I turned on the fixture,I have a second ballast and it did the same thing,I thought I would try the ballast with a pair of 4ft H.O. lamps and they lit up fine.I tried the 8 footers again and they worked and have been working fine ever since lol,seems like the ballast needs to be activated with 4 footers first.

That's odd! they may be sensitive to bunched up wires? sometimes

That's what I was thinking,before I tried the ballast with the 4 footers,I straightened out all the wires and the lamps still wouldn't stay lit.

I had something weird happen with the F17/F32T8 version...it would light but only barely (at tube ends, etc.) I returned it to the True Value I bought it at and bought another one.