Thinking about picking up a flat screen monitor for my wife's home office. Costco has a few on sale, don't know if these are worth it or not though. What specs are important?

Xerox 17" glass panel, $269 with $30 instant savings

Sharp 17", $229 after rebate

 

Bump this thread because I am curios too.

 

I just went through this and looked for these items.

Max resolution - Bigger the better

Brightness - Matter of personal taste

Contrast Ratio - 800 to 1

Pitch - Smaller the better

Response Time - Smaller the better

Analog or DVI connections Should have both


Just my thoughts, but I am far from an authority.

 

honestly if you've got the space, go to ebay and buy the old sony dell trinitron 21" monitors, they are the best, and for under 200 shipped they are practically giving them away!!

 

that's the thing, don't really have the space. Her desk isn't the biggest.

Interesting avatar...that's sort of borderline for this place...just FYI.

 

Tom,

I run 2 Dell 19" flat panels and really I am not impressed with them. The only reason I did it was for space savings. One of the screens already went out on me and thank the stars it was still under warranty.

 

I'm going to be purchasing Viewsonics 19" with 12ms refresh, but its gonna be used for gaming. It has an awesome picture and excellent refresh rate for games.

 

We have a handful of these in our office & they are mostly all going out. one had the color turning red, and a bunch are starting to get really faded pictures. most of them have screen burn in too, wouldn't suggest this route.

I dig my samsung 17" that i've had for about a year, no dead pixels & great picture. CNET had a little article about how samsung seems to be turning out winner after winner in the LCD department. My only complaint is that it seems you have to go 20" to get anything higher than 1280x1024. Those are still big bucks. Wife has a MAG 19", it was bust buys cheap one a month back & it's nice too.

 

Ahh, CNET...forgot about that place. I can look for some reviews there.

 

I got an el cheapo AOC 17" I paid like 399 in 02 still running strong. Can get the same on now for like 190.

any contrast radio over 600 is better than a CRT monitor
most resolutions at 1280/1024 are equal to CRT. Don't do the TV thing used as a monitor ( sony trinistron), it might look OK but the resolution is less than half that of even a CRT monitor.
From my experiance there is now no reason to get a CRT monitor. The flat screen gets twice the resonlution, is clearer , no screen flicker( even though you don't see the flicker your eyes do, and after 2-3 hours of looking at a CRT that headach you have is because of the CRT screen flicker), uses less than half the power of a crt, with the prices of a consumer grade screen 180-400 bucks it isn't to much more for a flat panel, not to mention you can keep your desk


pricewwatch

here is a good place to find the best price. what I use when I get around to building a new system

 

na i found it on pirate, though it was funny as hell, cause i do really work for fedex

 

TDiddy, may I ask what size monitor and what resolution your wife currently has?

She might be in for a small (pun intended) surprise with a fixed resolution LCD, especially if you take the advice above of going after the highest resolution and smallest pitch.

 

One thing to keep in mind if you go for a cheap LCD is the aspect ratio.
One major problem with mine is if you go outside their aspect ratio the screen goes blank and displays unusable signal. I acualy had to hook my brothers old crt monitor up and reset the resolution to get it to work again. But if you stay within their parameters Mine is 1280x1024 or any aspect ratio of 1.25:1 you'll never notice the problem

 

Without getting into the horrible trap of DB15 Analog versus DVI, I will say that I really like Samsung's digital displays. The 710T (17") and 910T (19") are nice, and IIRC Samsung will take back any displays that have even one dead pixel on them (!!!). Don't quote me on that, though.

Maybe a little out of your price range, I'm not sure. Nice displays though.