[Toptube]

that monitor appears to not be a TN. also Best-Buy is selling it for too much. the official gateway site says $230. you may want to go to a best buy and check this monitor out. they might still have last years model too, which has cool touch controls (my 22 has them) for the OSD.

[SplashBeats]

someone explain the difference between the different types of LCD monitors to me, and which would be ideal for a guy who favors high-resolution, clear, sharp picture, and good color. refresh time is important, but by no means my most important criteria.

[Toptube]

[Panoptic]

I can't live without font smoothing within Windows anymore, but to each his own.

Anyway, my dad has a 20" 4:3 Samsung TN panel, and I've got a 24" Dell PVA panel. Mine is drastically better at reproducing gradients, however his (contrary to the info in that thread) has deeper blacks when compared side by side to my Dell (which might be the insanely bright backlight in the Dell; his seems to crush blacks ever so slightly, but further examination shows that the sections are just too bright on my Dell). My Dell produces slight ghosting on big solid blocks of color from time to time. Viewing angle is pretty narrow on his, too, though it's also sharper than my Dell (which I find perfect; his is a bit too sharp for my tastes). @ Vinc: I'd recommend the *PVA. Best overall for general use, IMO.

A couple more considerations to make: Most 19" LCD's (that aren't widescreen) will be 5:4 (1280x1024), and 20"s will return to the normal 4:3 aspect (1600x1200). The main reason I'm still running a 24" (instead of having sold it in favor of a 30") is because I want to be able to watch 1080i/p material natively on it. Granted, the scaling circuitry in modern LCD's is vastly better than it was a few years ago. You may be surprised sending a good 1600x1200 LCD monitor a 1280x960 signal from a game.

Also, back when I was working at a computer shop, I used to deploy systems all the time and the shop exclusively used Acer panels. Out of the box, they're fucking horrid, but you can get them to produce an acceptable image by lowering the contrast and playing with the color levels a bit. I'd say they approached the color quality and black level of a Samsung with some tuning, but never quite got there.