Quote: Original post by zedz
cause it has less benifit for practically everything else, eg programming,modelling,art,music making 4:3 is a far better ratio

Off topic, but I've found that if you adjust your dev environment accordingly, you can get a very good layout using widescreen. Generally you move the tool menus (solution explorer, task list, toolbox etc) to the side of the window to allow the maximum vertical space for the editor.

Quote: Original post by tstrimp
[...]I realize it's hard to find out which LCD's use an LED backlight but if you can find them you will often get very close to or higher then the NTSC color gamut. Much better then what typical CRT monitors produce. I wish monitors would list the backlight they are using with their other specs.

Yeah, I've pretty much resigned myself to emailing all the manufacturers about every model that looks remotely interesting. It's amazing that despite all the modern technology, product information isn't readily available from any of the major manufacturers' websites.

Since I swapped to LCD, there is no way I'm going back to CRTs :) And I like widescreen. You get used to it very quickly and then it wont matter. Besides, you can rotate some LCDs 90 degrees if you wish to do so.

I have a Dell 24''. It's well nice. We have some Samsung 22'' at work and I'm very impressed with them. As for dead pixels, I wouldn't know, I never saw one :) And ghosting LCDs are a thing of the past.

several 'drawbacks' I found.

- Native resolution is best. It doesn't look as good as CRTs for custom resolutions.

- Darkening when viewing at an angle. That is particularly true with my older samsung. But I have no real problems with the Dell, but it's still there.

- Build quality is so so. Lots of cheap plastics on most new LCDs.

- Most LCDs are widescreens. But really, I wouldn't go back to 4/3. Widescreen works for me.

But really, with the most recent LCDs are very very good. No ghosting of any kind, no dead pixels, high contrast, cheap, and so far reliable.

Quote: Original post by Extrarius
Which is exactly what I have been saying - LCDs cannot compete with CRTs on features for price. You can certainly pick some features and toss others and get only a slightly higher price, but resolution is a really big feature, and probably the single most important one for displays.

I feel your pain. I'd love to replace my 19" CRT with something that won't give me a hernia every time I move house, but trying to find an equivilent or better quality LCD is just impossible unless I spend about three times what I originally spent on this CRT.

I think LCDs have won purely on the thin form factor and "sexiness" rather than on actual technical merit.

It's official, my large CRT died. Now I'm on an ancient, tiny, low-res monitor that adds a nice faint green tint to everything! Hopefully the companies will get back to me soon, ...

Quote: Original post by Extrarius
It's official, my large CRT died. Now I'm on an ancient, tiny, low-res monitor that adds a nice faint green tint to everything! Hopefully the companies will get back to me soon, ...

When a monitor died where I used to work, it would have a brief 10 seconds mourning, then we took it out back and set it on fire.

If it helps, I have a Iiyama ProLite E200 21" 1680x1050, cost £130 GBP, and I DON'T recommend it.

Colour is vibrant, good for gaming, but in the high resolutions I get very tiny (almost unnoticable) black scanlines appearing on black text, as if there's some minute interference.

Once you notice it, it becomes an itch.

I'm getting a NEC AccuSync 120, which is the best CRT I can find. I couldn't find a whole lot of information about it, but it supports 1600x1200 @ 76 Hz which is as good as what I was using.
Now the only question is "Should I buy 2?"

The sweet spot is around 22-24". 1920x1200 is a good resolution. If you use a NVIDIA graphics card, set it to "adapter scaling" for resizing game modes, and it will not stretch the image, but instead add borders on the sides (without making the display ludicrously small in the center).

If you can afford two screens, and you spend at least half your computing time writing code or developing art, then it's worth it. If you're mostly surfing the web and playing games, it's not worth it.

Quote: Original post by hplus0603
[...]If you can afford two screens, and you spend at least half your computing time writing code or developing art, then it's worth it. If you're mostly surfing the web and playing games, it's not worth it.

The "should I buy 2" was about having another CRT for when the first one goes, not dual screens. I decided 1 was probably enough since it has a 3 year warranty - hopefully by the time it dies, LCDs will have improved a bit further. Maybe by then, manufacturer's will figure out how to sell their product's merits.

Quote: Original post by ExtrariusMaybe by then, manufacturer's will figure out how to sell their product's merits.

I guess LCD makers sell their products to the 99.99% of people who don't care about what sort of backlight their monitor use or if it has the full NTSC color gamut that their old bulky CRT didn't come close to, or that their artificial refresh rate is somehow limiting the enjoyability of their games.