the electrician when I got my new kitchen insisted that Halogen bulbs were the way to go for the high hats.
what a load of crap....they bring the temperature of the kitchen up to about 90°F in the dead of winter(forget about the summer) and when the lights were on I couldn’t read the numbers on the electric meter as the darn thing spins too fast....
I replaced them with compact florescent spot lights...
We avoid halogen lights for exactly the reasons you stated. The LED lights we installed were under the cabinets on both sides of the kitchen. We still use old fashioned incandescent spot lights that are recessed in the ceiling. We avoid CFLs because, to us, most of them give off an annoying, unnatural light. As the price of LEDs come down, I think they will dominate CFLs in most applications.