well that sucks. Do you know of any good 17" or 19" monitors with higher resolutions? Almost all of the ones I see are 1280x1024.

Though I'm thinking how much the web would suck at so much high of a resolution...being that most still design for 800x600
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Think of it this way: more pixels means more pixels to fail. Large monitors will have no affect on how websites are made. The first thing I noticed when I moved to a 1280 wide screen after using 1024 for years was that I stopped having any application except graphics ones like Fireworks or Photoshop open full screen.

For example, I use the web developer toolbar on Firefox to set Firefox to 1024x768, and always browse using that. Same for IE, I just set it around 1000px wide, or smaller. That's something all those discussions of website size completely ignored, just because you have a big screen doesn't mean that the application open window is big, my dad has a 22" mac lcd monitor, and it's almost like a dual monitor, you can have applications open next to each other, that's a very expensive item though, over 2 grand if I remember right, you have to pay a lot for a lot of pixels or you'll get a lot of dead pixels in short time.

That's the biggest change I had, and it took a while to get used to, now I really like it, it means it's really easy to position things to move easily between them, like I often have 2-4 instances of EditPlus open at once so I can work on different sections of a site, programming, etc without getting stuff mixed up.

Of course, the real thing is to use Linux with dual monitors and different workspaces assigned to each monitor, I have 5 workspaces setup on my Kanotix, single monitor currently, main work one, web, email, utilities, and graphics, just tab between them, all the stuff opens up when I startup except Firefox, all the files I had open load, it's a thing of beauty to see.

Hoping to go dual monitor sometime, it's a lot easier, KDE has really good dual monitor support, much better than Windows I think. For me 17" is totally fine, it's not the inches, it's more having the actual open screen extra that I'd much rather have, for example, to have text editor in one, browser in the other, etc, doesn't really matter to me how big those 1280 pixels are, it's more having enough windows open at one time so I don't have to switch back and forth all the time.
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I'm just thinking that going from a 19" crt to a 17" lcd is going to be like going to a smaller screen. I really don't think i'll be going higher than 1280x1024 anyway. I'll actually probably be sticking to 1024x768 for at least the remainder of this year.
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Think of it this way: a 17" crt is actually about a 16" lcd, a 19" crt is about a 18, or maybe 17.5" lcd. That's because the lcd is all there, the crt measures the whole tube, including the unuseable part, and some of the glass under the plastic edges.

I couldn't dream of using 1280x1024 on my old 17" crt, but it's fine on my 17" lcd. When I go to a friend's house who has a 19" crt, his monitor looks roughly about as big as mine in terms of display area.

The only advantage I could see in getting a 19" lcd is having the text be slightly larger, which would be nice, but that's about it, not much for $140 extra dollars.
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well i guess i should have been more clear. I guess this thing must be a 21" (i got it from my parents). the screen is 19" from top left to bottom right.
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Well... several interesting developments that now have me wondering.

I spoke with tech support at ViewSonic, and they're both nice and eager to be helpfu... and they sent me an RMA for returning the monitor. (On the basis of their support, I'm wishing they were making top-rated LCDs right now, but they're not... but I like the company). In any event, I have a slight extension because I already have the RMA.

I was all ready to get the Samsung 710N-2 (analog only) and send the VA720 back to ViewSonic, when my generous uncle suggested that he'd pay the difference between the 710N-2 and the newer 730B, which is analog/digital and appears to have slightly better specs.

I have a dual head card... one analog, one digital... and thought I'd double-check with my clone builder that the card was compatible with the DVI input of the 730B, since DVI seems to have some variants.

Here's the currently confusing part... The clone builder's tech said the problem might well be due to magnetic fields from my speakers. When I asked him how far away they had to be from the screen, he said: "far enough so the problem doesn't happen." Since I only see the problem once every few days, this makes the diagnosis very tricky, and there is some time pressure on the return... but I don't want to return the monitor unnecessarily.

Any thoughts about the speaker theory? It rang a bell when he mentioned it... I've heard it discussed before... but I'm not sure what the speaker-induced flicker looks like. As I'm seeing the problem now, when it happens it's a change of color temperature, sometimes going from slightly warm to slightly blue over anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds. It sometimes repeats... sometimes doesn't. He suggested it also might be the connections.

Also, anyone know if the Samsung monitors come with a DVI cable? They're expensive, and the whole area of these cables and adapters is new to me. It probably makes sense to order cables from ZipZoomFly if I go that way, and I don't want to buy any cable or adapter that's not necessary.

ZipZoomFly, incidentally, said they'd exchange a Samsung that had only 3 bad pixels, which is a lot better than NewEgg's policy.
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And, a PS to this... What I've found on the web about the possible effects of speakers on display suggests the LCDs are in fact less likely to be affected by magnetic fields than CRTs.

This makes me think that the speakers are unlikely to be the cause. Has anyone seen speakers affecting LCD displays?
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Good to hear you're working on the problem. The distortions you mention are most definitely a factor with CRTs, faxes are especially bad if they are on the same circuit by the way, so are fans, so the advice to keep the stuff away is generically right but I tend to agree with your feelings that LCDs are not subject to those types of fluctuations, it's a totally different technology, crts blast thousands of volts of electricity at the screen surface to create the image, lcds just light up tiny little lcd units, never seen lcd screen distortion.

Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just means I've never seen it, but I've definitely seen CRT distortion, many times.

Your findings on zipzoomfly confirms my faith in them, I've spent thousands with that company, they don't pay me to recommend them, and I've never had any issues, there are a bunch of little warning signs with newegg, signs of cheapness, things like the expedite shipping processing charge really bugged me, it's nickel and dime stuff, just raise your damned prices and expedite all the shipping... Good to know about the pixel count, and, again, that confirms what I experienced in my two purchases, the newegg screen had at least 5 or more dead pixels, I didn't count, but I saw it right away.

Rather than speculate on what might or might not be the cause, I'd remove the speakers, or turn them off, remove any fax machine that might be around, and see if the problem surfaces again. But since you have an RMA you need to send it soon I assume, next day or two.

Glad to hear viewsonic has good tech support, but doesn't make up for display issues.
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Latest update... I took a big plunge and kicked in an extra $100 to get the Samsung 930B. With my uncle's contribution and the BestBuy rebate, I can swing it, and it's a stunning monitor. Looked better than the Sony with xBRITE... and in fact it looked better than anything else in the store (I got it locally). No bad pixels that I can see.

As for the flicker/color-change problem with the ViewSonic... before getting the new monitor, I tried moving my speakers and reconnecting the cables, and the problem continued. It was particularly apparent on a screen filled with mostly white. Since switching to the 930B, I haven't seen the problem at all.

When I get the ViewSonic back, I'm sure I'm going to have a bunch of questions about setting up two monitors. To get ready for that, I'll need to get a DVI cable (my card has one analog and one digital output). I'm amazed how expensive the DVI cables with the gold contacts are. Am seeing NewEgg list an ArrowMicro cable for $15.99, and don't see anything else even close. Anyone have any thoughts on these things?

I've never heard of ArrowMicro. I have heard of Belken and MonsterCable, but the price difference is huge. Will I see the difference?
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Don't skimp on cabling, but in this case you don't need cabling, all you need is an analog to dvi adaptor, then you plug the standard analog cable into that.

I didn't think that the screen distortions were caused by outside influences, that's a CRT thing usually.

The samsungs are really good, your reaction was the same as mine when I got it, my friends were laughing at me because I couldn't stop looking at it: where's Jeff D? He's staring at his monitor...

The change is really astounding, now when I look at a friend's high end CRT, 19", the curved screen, the glare, makes me wince, I can barely look at it.

Now you know why the Samsung was so highly regarded, both on these forums and others, glad to hear the 19" is as good. That was a well spent $100 extra I think.

Re dual monitors, what card do you have, just out of curiousity?

I'll be switching to duals pretty soon too, nice to get some feedback.

Keep in mind this: Windows 2000 and XP only support the same resolution on both screens, odd that, Windows 98 let you run different resolutions. Not an issue in Linux of course, but you're not there yet, I'm not fully either.

PS, the old norton file manager you liked is a standard Linux console app, called midnight commander. Personally I like Krusader more, much better.

Setting up dual monitors is pretty easy, it's all pretty much automatic, just have to tweak some settings.
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