Welp, I’m headed off to College in the fall, and I’d like to get a flatpanel monitor for my computer, in hopes of saving alittle space in my dorm 
My budget is limited to around 300ish…
I need a good reliable flatpanel, Warranty preferable…
Right now I’ve been looking at the NEC/Mitisubishi flatpanels. Has anyone had some experience with these?
Thanks for your help!
I have an NEC 1530V LCD flatpanel monitor, and I love it. Even though it’s considered a 15" monitor, the viewable area is almost the same as a 17" CRT monitor, because the full 15" is usable. I’ve had it for nearly two years, and never had the slightest problem with it. And, it has a three year warranty.
I run it at 1024x768, with 32 bit color, and it’s clear and sharp. And, it saves a TON of desk space. It seems that this model has been replaced by the 1550 and 1560, but they’re both under $300 at CompUSA’s website. Along with 115 or 20 others.
Thanks for the input.
It was between NEC and Viewsonic, and I’d heard good things about the Viewsonic and nothing about the NEC…
Since I’ve had positive input about both I suppose now the only factor is cost…
Thanks for the help
I have good luck with BenQ (Used to be Aopen) monitors. Very sharp and bright, and not one major issue with the 37 we’ve picked up in the last six months at work.
You’re welcome. And, obviously, I meant “15 or 20 others”, not 115. Apparently, my left little finger stutters.
When you check out flat panels (and when you get your own), be sure to do the following:
It’d be a pity to turn down the best monitor simply because the bozos at the store had the computer set to a non-native resolution.
A side question: does anyone have any commentary on the “ghosting” effect that is said to occur when playing 3D shooter games or other games with rapid movements/screen changes?
Yep. Can’t avoid it except by paying a LOT of money. And even then it shows up.
It gets pretty bad, too. Remember how you can get motion sick from Doom if you’re not used to it? Same thing but worse.
The ghosting effect is pretty annoying, but you can get over it with time(or so says my friend with a 15" LCD that cost more than my 19" CRT. 
)
:eek:
That’s amazing!! Thank you!
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Okay, now that I’ve recovered, the only issue I have with flat-panels is the fact that you can only use water to clean them, and with a sensitive cloth. This sort of brings to an end the time-honored practice of spitting beverage upon reading a witty post.
I have to NEC/Mitsubishi flat panel LCD monitors—a MultiSunc LCD1700V (17") and a LCD1560V (15"). The 17" is about a year old and still going strong, the 15" one is maybe 5 months, and it’s fabulous too. I have used them on both Mac and PC (running Windows 98, XP, OS 9 and OS X) and they are always compatable and look great.
I even have an old crappy PC with an 8 MB video card—it displays 1024x768 (native resolution for the 15") at millions of colors. Of course the Hertz is 60, but that doesn’t really matter, because LCD doesn’t flicker like CRT monitors. It’s so much easier on the eyes; you can’t imagine!
Unless you producing very color sensitive work for print graphics, a LCD monitor is fine. Hell—if you have the bucks, one of those Apple Cinema Displays will serve exceedingly well for high-end graphics. But I don’t have the bucks, so my NEC flat panels work well enough for my Photoshop work. (I don’t work on extremely color-intensive print work.)
More information than you really needed? Oops, sorry! It’s just that when I start talking about flat panels, it’s hard to stop…
Make SURE you get an LCD with a DVI (Digital Video Interconnect) connection, and that your computer has a DVI out port. If you try to use the same VGA connection you use for a CRT monitor, you’ll get dramatically reduced quality (the signal has to be converted from digital to analog, and then from analog back to digital). If your computer doesn’t have DVI output, you’ll need to upgrade the videocard to support it.
One of the major problems with LCDs is dead pixels. You can generally assume that any panel you buy will have some pixels that are stuck on or stuck off, but how many you consider acceptable is important to keep in mind. Make sure you check the return and warranty policies before you buy your LCD monitor, as many companies will not accept returns due to defective pixels.
I suggest that you really consider if the space you gain is worth the hassle of an LCD monitor. You’ll spend a lot more money and might notice significant image quality loss depending on what you use the system for.
I have a LCD-monitor and love it. No problem with dead pixels (I did check it in the shop before I took it home), at least not that I can see. I don’t use DVI but the same VGA connection and don’t notice any quality difference. I’ve used it to play Quake 2 and Alice and didn’t have a problem with lag (okay, maybe I’m not very good at it, but still).
I use it mainly for word processing and web surfing. For those purposes its fine. Love the extra space on my desktop, and the non-flickering screen So I say: go ahead. In other words: what yosemitebaby said.
Only lag problem I have is with SDMB: when I click on a thread my monitor takes ages to refresh the screen…
Thanks, I just tried that, it looks kinda weird though, much softer. I hope I can get used to it.
Hey Tensoc,
OfficeDepot has the Samsung® SyncMaster™ 150S 15" LCD Monitor. Comes with a 3 year warranty. $195 after rebate & free shipping
Both my monitors are VGA, and just Tusculan, I don’t notice a huge degredation of quality.
I do work in Photoshop and I do work with graphics, but mostly they are web graphics. However, I recently had some posters printed out from an online service. I sent them my RGB files (I’d previewed them in CMYK) and I was really quite amazed at how nice the color looked on the posters. I wasn’t expecting spot-on perfect color, naturally, but my monitor displayed a reasonable representation of what the final (printed) product looked like. So, for my personal, non-professional (but still kind of picky) standards, my VGA LCD monitors are OK.
I have flat panel monitors both at work and home; here at work it is a 17" Samsung, at home it is a 15" Acer.
The Acer was really cheap (it is an ‘entry-level’ brand) but oddly it is the better of the two by far (in terms of brightness, clarity and response and is at least as good as anything else I have seen.
The Samsung model has a tilt function, so you can turn it through 90 degrees and have a portrait format screen, but it is very uncomfortable to look at this way, because (and this is really hard to describe) the viewing angle in the (normal) x axis is narrower than the viewing angle in the y axis - when you rotate the monitor by 90 degrees, you get a very narrow, deep viewing angle - the result of this is that your left eye always sees a darker image than your right and it is quite discomforting.
It would help if I’d not got the normal x and Y axes mixed up;
Normal viewing = wide, shallow viewing angle, but that is OK, because you move your head side to side much more than up and down.
Rotated viewing: = tall, narrow viewing angle, so narrow that the eyes see images of noticeably differing brightness.
I have a Sharp 18" display at work and love it. It’s only 1/2" smaller than my old 21" CRT, and has much better brightness, contrast and sharpness. I recently had to switch from DVI cable to VGA [1] and I think I see a slight decrease in sharpness. Nothing I can’t live with.
[1] I set up a dual monitor system, and the Linux driver for my G550 card doesn’t support DVI in dual output mode.