On Bonds Munis and Convertibles

The below link is about Municipal (Munis) Bonds (Answer to Indu's query in there)
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/bonds/05/022805.asp
Important benefits of using Munis are that they are Tax exempt, but on the downside is the low returns compared to market.

Convertible Bonds, these are awesome instruments (I am tickled by the thought of them). They have the benefits of a bond (low risk... though with lower return than a convential bond), and also have the option to tap the upside potential of the equity's return at maturity of the Bond, with no downside risk (meaning, if the share prices go up, you could swap the bonds for shares, in the initial bond-equity swap ratio (and get the equities return), but if the share prices fall, you could give up the option to swap into equity and get the Face value back.
So this could be a long term investment strategy on a corporate equity, without the downside risk, and with garunteed dividends (thats another way to look at this).
(a good introduction to all this is avaialbe at)
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/01/052301.asp