Is the Philips plant light the screw in reflector bulb? Those are useless. Thought I'd get that out of the way :)

You may want to consult the terrarium and herb forums for their thoughts but I'm not so sure that a terrarium is a good place to grow most herbs, especially not for the mediterranean ones. They like low humidity, sharp drainage, lots of fresh air, and strong sun. A terrarium provides higher humidity, good water retention, stagnant air, and plants will fry in strong sun.

How much light you need depends on how many plants you have. Herbs are mostly high light plants and will grow best in lots of direct sun. This is hard to duplicate with artificial light. Insufficient light will give you less flavour. The simplest solution is just to let your plants rest in winter and grow in the summer. Basil is often grown as an annual.

Don't use an aquarium bulb, they are for aquariums. Don't use a coral bulb, they are for corals. Use a specialist fluorescent plant bulb if you like but they tend to be a bit expensive. You will be at the limits of what fluorescent tubes can provide, growing these full sun plants. Look for high output T5 tubes, modern T8s possibly overdriven, or look at compact fluorescents. HPS and metal halide bulbs are likely to be more than you want on a window ledge setup. To give you a rough idea of where to start, a 42W compact fluorescent in a nice reflector to direct the light down, would perhaps be suitable for one square foot of plants.

hahahhaha! i did see the screw in reflector bulb, but i opted for one that may in fact be more useless (it looks like a regular incandescent light bulb except it's frosted blue). in any case, you were right...my lone seedling died under the aquarium light.
oh man...i had no idea there were so many things to consider when growing plants. thank you so much for your advice -- i'll have to look up t5s and t8s and see what they're all about, if not, i might just have to wait for spring like you said.
thank you so much!

You guessed right, the blue frosted reflector bulbs are useless :)

Its really not hard. T8s are just slimline fluorescent tubes that you find everywhere in the box stores. T5 are the even slimmer-line fluorescent tubes that you find quite a lot but cost more. The slimline styles are useful as plant lights because you can get more light from a smaller area, and plants are always hungry for more light. These work just fine for 90% of people raising some seeds or growing a small area of plants.

What makes it hard is that there are hundreds of people out there trying to sell you something more expensive ;) Then there are people that actually do have a need for specialist lights (where specialist means different from lights that people would use in their homes), freshwater tank growers, seawater aquariums even more so, and those folks that want to raise a basement full of pot!

P.S. The only real substitute for the sun is lights so expensive you'd refuse to pay for them.

You can grow with artificial lights just fine.
Start with 2-3 40 watts CFL from wall-mart they fit in any screw-in fixture.

Take a look at my pepper plant. Grown under 85 watts CFL.
The plant has never been exposed to sunlight.

It's starting to flower :) It's got more then 30 buds on it.