Well, finally got it. My computer dude was a week late delivering my new LCD screen. In the end, the samsung 730B I was looking at wasn't available and I ended up with a 17" Samsung 740N. Same price, $300.

I set it up on my woman's desk and called her in to see. I thought she was going to be mad because I "wasted" the money. Took about five seconds for it to sink in and she fell in love. Not with me, with the screen. The desk never looked so roomy.

The screen - easy to assemble, easy to get the plugs in, then it's plug n' play, though there are drivers on a CD for advanced colour and control options. The CD refuses to work in her CD player, though, but works fine in my CD/DVD player, Odd.

It's a very bright screen. Even with the gamma and brightness turned down this thing is bright. The native res is 1280x1024, smaller than the 1024x768 we both are used, to but the screen is very clear so it's easy to read at the higher res. For surfing and text work, this screen in great. Clear, crisp, easy to read. Good office screen.

For games things change. In IL2 (flightsim) horizontal lines appear looking like a new page trying to be inserted over the old one when the action gets fast. I'm not sure what this is called but it looks like tearing. I didn't notice much ghosting, fast moving images leaving trails behind them, just the tearing. The game looked good, though odd to see it on a screen an inch thick, looks like a comic book. The colours were good, the detail is nice. If it wasn't for the tearing I'd buy one of these in a second to play on.

Also, DVDs don't look that great. A bit fuzzy and with that LCD pixelated haze thing going on. I'll try a few more to be sure.

Another good thing - the 17" on this LCD has only 1/2" less viewable than my 19" CRT. Gotta love that.