LCD (or other) Computer Monitors
 

- need a big 'un... for Windoz machines

I guess OLED will never get there in my few months time frame - let me know if you have some info otherwise...

Any thoughts on what to get (or what to avoid)?

also, is there any significant price savings to buy a complete setup (computer + monitor) at the same time/same manf.?

Thx!

how big?

What is it for? (it might be better for you to get two displays, rather than one big one... it depends on what you are using it for)

How BIG?

What will it be used for? Something specialized like CAD, heavy duty photo/video or just average Word, Internet, maybe a little photoshop, etc...?

No

I just paid $169 for an ASUS 23" LCD monitor to use for drafting. It is 1920 x 1080 (1080p)

23 might do it - the one I have now has a measured screen size of 20" (Dell UltraSharp). It will go into the downtown office with the old Dell 8300 XP machine, which I am also looking to replace (tho I am not so adventurous/crazy/have enuff time) to build my own box...

I've got a Samsung SyncMaster 2433BW. It's a 24" 1920x1200. I really like it. It looks like all of the new ones are coming in the 1920x1080 res. It looks like they are probably going to run $230-350 or so as well.

I really like my 23" LG, about $270 with a 4-year warranty from Best Buy.

If you have spare money, get the 27" LED Apple Cinema Display with 2560x1440 res. Absolutely gorgeous (I saw it at Apple hq). Just went on sale today for $999.

You can get a wide variety of 22" Widescreens from Newegg for about $150ish, sometimes less, I run two of them at my desk, and I have upgraded pretty much everyone in the office to them now vs. the 17s-19s they had before.

If you're just running office apps and such, and you know, working, you don't need the newest super fast, super high color gamut stuff. Any baseline 22 will be better than just about anything from 4 years or so ago.

I have a mix of Acer, ASUS, some Hanns-G, they all work just fine, so far I think the ASUS has the nicest bezel/stand setup of the bunch.

Is that the "ring"?

I find the ASUS I just setup a little funky. Looks and works nice, except that when I switch it to DVI or HDMI, the screen shrinks a bit. VGA mode is fine.

This is the one I am currently lusting over: HP 30" IPS -- $1,299 !

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/382087-382087-64283-72270-3884471-4194577.html

What I am using at home is a 25 or 26" Viewsonic and at the office we've equipped just about everyone with dual 22" Viewsonics.

Prices and quality have really normalized in recent years and it is hard to go wrong with the brand name stuff in the 22-24" sizes. If you are doing color-critical work or staring at the screen 14 hours a day then you may want to be choosy and pay a bit more, but otherwise a few hundred bucks will get you there.

Plug and Play.

I just priced up an i7-950 system
DVD Burner
WD Black 6GB/s 1TB Drive
ASUS 23" Monitor
Sapphire 1GB Radeon HD 5570 Video Card
Logictech Keyboard and Monitor
Card reader
6GB DDR 2000 (PC3 16000) RAM
ASrock X58 MB
Intel i7-950 3.06 GHz Processor (Quad Core)
Broadway Case & 600W Power Supply
Window 7 Home Premium x64 (Add $40 for Pro, drop $15 for the i7-930)

$1199.78 - Some Assembly required

Dell - Alienware Area 51
i7-930, 1TB Drive 3GB/s, 6GB DDR 1600, rest the same.
$2648, (Add Win Pro +$140!)

An AMD Phenom II X6 1055 version (Replace MB, CPU and RAM) can knock off about $250 to about $950. (5,168 vs 6,279 processor difference).

My work display is an HP 3065 30" LCD - runs about $1280, 2560x1600 resolution. You can get lost in it, it's so big. Absolutely necessary if you're like me and use programs that have lots of toolbars and enjoy turning all of them on at once to see every option available.