If you had to buy a monitor today...

24" viewsonic something or rather as well

didn't care too much for widescreen computing until i had the pleasure of trying out a colleague's workstation. now i feel robbed

I would get the DELL 27" or 30" widescreen LCD monitor. The 27" would have all the connections you want for your toys. The 30" only has one DVI connection. I run the 30" but to get decent frame rates at 2560x1600 you will need a hi end SLI or Crossfire setup. The 27" is a 1920x1200 so less stressful so something like a 8800GTS 640mb would work fine.

Dell 27" info

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=222-7315

Doesnt mention the need for dual link DVI card.

If I wanted to spend a ton of money I would buy a 27 or 30" Dell. They are amazing monitors. If I wanted to save some money I might go for the Gateway 24" WS monitor since it has HDCP (I don't think the Dell 24" does). I might also consider dual 22" WS Dell monitors for about the same price of one 24".

I think 1920x1200 is max for single DVI. Beyond that you need dual. My 24" maxxed at that res. I would think 27" would need more to be sharp.

DaverJ..have you thought about the triplehead2go from Matrox?

I bought the Gateway 24" FPD2485W, and it's gorgeous. Wasn't that pricey either, IMO.

You can get flatpanel LCD's in 1080p for $500-$800....

The Dell monitors have consistantly been overpriced, to my eyes. Plus with the TV's you usually get alot more inputs, and usually an NTSC or ATSC tuner too.

HP has a new 30". Worth looking at if that's of interest.

Well my 37" Westinghouse has no internal tuner, so its basically a gigantic monitor.
Via DVI at 1080p, its a great big gigantic laptop monitor in terms of brightness and sharpness. My model is a refurb, several years old, with a 12ms refresh rate...I get some dark ghosting on some games but that doesn't bother me like it does some. The newer models, also cheap, have response times half of that, which eliminates thats problem.

The last time I checked, the only advantage that PC monitors had over LCD flatpanel TV's was that they sometimes had better refresh rates, or perhaps better color accuracy, but that varies greatly among manufacturer. Oh, right, and PC monitors offer higher than 1080p resolutions. And higher resolutions are a blessing, but also a big curse if you're a gamer.

Unlike our old CRT monitors, scaling on LCD monitors is never, ever, ever pretty. Its tolerable, but its not optimal. So....do you have a PC that can drive a game at 1080p?
Or if you go with a smaller PC/Apple monitor with a higher-than-1080p resolution, will your videocard play a game at the native rez?

It came down, for me, to spending (at the time) $800 on a 24" Dell widescreen whos reviews were ok, but not great. Or a 37" Westinghouse, which I opted for. I have yet to see a "good" contrast ratio on an LCD display so seeing 1000:1 versus 1400:1 to me doesn't mean anything in the real world. Play with some lights on in the room and the CR will always look fine for gaming or movies.

For me, it came down to having a 24" desktop display...versus having a much larger display with more inputs that I coule move anywhere in my house and run as a HDTV (with cable box or antenna), DVD display, cable display, video game display, etc, etc, etc...

The nice thing is that todays LCD TV's have much better refresh rates than they used to, which is probably the only thing I'd improve on my own display. oh yeah, and I need a new PC with dual 8800SLI video boards to drive all games at 1080p happily :P

I like having a 37" 1080p monitor.....it wont be breaking anytime soon (we hope), I wont ever need anything bigger, and eventually I'll have a PC that drives its rez natively without issue for all games.

Truth be told I can do that now, just not on the hot FPS's. I mean UT2004 at 1920x1080 is fine..even Doom III at 1080p is doable...Prey hovers in the 60's, but Prey also is one of those games that doesn't look too bad scaling to a lower rez either. Fear isn't easy to keep in the 60's at 1080p, and forget about Stalker....BF2 is just fine at 1080p.

If anything, I got the monitor too soon....because I didn't realize how quickly I'd move away from PC gaming in general in favor of the consoles. But, I do love having the massive real-estate and I love it when I edit movies being able to see a huge chunk of timeline at once for my NLE stuff. Working with photos is great, I can run two apps side by side at giant sizes, etc.

You wont get that with a dinky 23" Monitor

Dell LCD monitors are from the same manufacturer as Apple's Cinema displays, and are generally excellent. My wife has the Dell 2407 (24 inch widescreen) and loves it.

I don't think the 24" DELL uses an IPS panel, whereas I think the 23" apple does. The 27" and 30" are IPS I believe.

We are up in the air right now with where we'll be living or relocating entirely (job stuff). I had a thought today that if we stayed, we'd turn my office into a play room for our son. We'd leave the desk and PCs so my wife had something to do up there while he's playing (plus I don't want to lug all that stuff downstairs to the basement). A thought came to mind that I could probably massage the WAF into a larger 1080p display/monitor so it could do double duty as a PC and television up there. Yeah....of course I'd need to upgrade the video card and entire system to run it appropriately. That's a nice option.

For the Dell monitors you do have to send it the exact max res for it to be smooth. Is the Apple 23" different? If it does scaling so theres no fuzzy edges then thats great but 23" is small. Does the Apple have a scaler? What is IPS?

IPS is one of the flat-panel technologies in use by monitor companies these days.
Panels used to sacrifice color-accuracy for speed, to get the ghosting down, which is why the original batch of low-refresh rate LCD panels were fugly to look at.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD#IPS

Today, if you ask me, if you are a standard gamer then a 1366x768 (720p) 32" Widescreen LCD Television is the way to go, or even better a 37" 1080p display........you just need to make sure you have the horsepower to drive 1080p.

Even though lcd's are getting better I would still have to go with a CRT monitor. I got mine used from canadamonitors. It's a 22" Mitsu Diamondpro 2060u. I have never seen its equal.

And it will scale (with no picture degredation) to fit any resolution so I can really customizethe settings for each game to fit my hardware. Some games I need to go with a lower resolution so I can turn on more eye candy for instance.

If you want the best picture and have the space, I'd still go with a trusty ol' CRT. I will probably get a new monitor in about 2 years and by then I am hoping an LCD will satisfy me.

What's a good 19"? I can't afford a 24" unfortunately. I want one that can do 1080p and is good for gaming. I currently have the LG194WT, and while it's a decent monitor the colors on it are crap. Skin tones look very hot and no matter how much I adjust it, it doesn't go away. I was looking at the Samsung's.

Agreed. For less than the cost of a 24" WS LCD, you could buy a 2048 x 1536 capable 21" (ViewSonic G225fb) or 22" (Mitsubishi Diamondpro 2060u) CRT I'm still using 19-21" 1600 x 1200 CRTs that I buy off craigslist for $20-25. When one breaks, there's always another to pick up.. nothing like a $400 monitor for $20 since everyone is struck by the flatscreen crazy!

I'd wait for the next round of coupons and get a Dell 24"

Of course, pack that many pixels in a small display and its going to look awfully sharp. We keep coming back to the question of what do you want to do with it?

Do you need a hyper-resolution monitor, if so, what for? To run a higher-rez desktop? To view super high-rez photographs (aka: PRON!)? To Game on at the native rez of the display? Or do you just have the itch, and want to buy something new, flat and snazzy? (That was, mainly, my reason!).

And more importantly, do you have a budget? You know it helps to have a budget....that kind of gets you in a neighborhood to start shopping in, no?

For me, I'm not dropping $600+ on a PC monitor anymore...forget that. But on a TV with tuners and inputs for Component or a DVD player or whatever? That I can justify.

OK I use both LCD TVs and Monitors.

For pure gaming and PC I would go monitor. If you plan on connecting a lot of other devices then the TV. The only issue with TV's is the over brightness....way too bright in most cases and if you turn it down to use as a monitor, it screws up the color for HT unless the TV has seperate mem for brightness and contrast for each input. But if not then if you are willing to adjust for each use then go for a TV.