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You might recall Sony's announcement a few weeks ago indicating they would stop producing CRT monitors (except 22"+ models) and replacing their whole line up with LCD Flat Panels, and for a reason.

Today, ZDNet is reporting that for the first time in history sales of flat-panel monitors are about to overtake those of traditional CRT monitors, a rising trend among new PC buyers...

Shipments of flat panel monitors has been approximately doubling every year since 2000, leading to shortages in early 2002. Toward the middle of that year, however, supplies began to creep up and prices began to drop again.

Monitor sizes will on average also increase. The most common LCD monitors today come with 15-inch screens. In 2005, 17-inch screens will become the norm.

Hmm... I thought 17" monitors were the norm already, I guess there is a lot of people using older monitors still. As a point of reference, about 50% of TS readers use 1024x768 screen resolution, then 18% use 800x600 & 1280x1024 (each). Which makes me wonder, the most recent version of the frontpage isn't optimized for low resolutions (800 and below) any users out there having a hard time reading?

I don't understand why lots of people go from 17' flat CRT to 15' LCD.

17 flat CRt is 16' view size which is still 1' larger than the 15 LCD. and what's more, pictures on LCD look much worse than in CRT.

well, I am using a 17' Flat CRT. but if I want to upgrade to LCD, I will choose 17' LCD or 18' LCD. if too expensive for me, i go straight to 19' Flat CRT.

that is my next upgrade plan.

Its great for me at home, I run 1152x768. Right now Im at school and the resoltions here are 800x600 on all comps. Still looks fine, other than the right border is cut off, you gotta scroll over. LCD looks horrible in fast moving situations. Think of playing UT. Yuck, you can see an instance of this if you perhaps scroll down a web page. Everything goes all fuzzy. Well I should get back to my english

Laterz

I run 1280x1024 on my 19"

I just run 1024x768 on my 19" monitor, perhaps I could go a notch higher with no problems but the lower resolution works better for my eyes in the long term.

I bought a 19" cheap CRT a year ago and would NEVER EVER reduce screen size for ANY reason !!

Even 18" LCD seems too small, and atm the fuzzyness and gfx quality seems to be still an important issue. As I said, my CRT is a very cheap one ($250 AOC), but the quality is very very good !!!

Another thing : LCD has a digital display (pixels), while CRT is mostly analog. yeah there are masks and stuff that can be similar to pixels, but the rays are still analog !!!

I run on 1152x864 on my 17" . The resolution suits me well, I would NEVER go below it again, I don't know how I got by on my old sis6326 8MB where the max res was 1024x768!! Well, it was 1280x720, but it would flicker and go blurry at 60Hz (max at res). 85/100/120Hz are probably the most common, 85 does me no harm.

I think they meant in 2005 the standard would be 17" TFT not 17" CRT

Anyway, I know a few people who have bought 17" TFTs (Samsung 172T) and using DVI outputs on video cards are more than happy with the screens response times and sharpness of picture. I work on a laptop all the time and I don't notice a hell of a lot of ghosting but I do notice the difference between my laptop screen @ 1600x1200 and my 19" Samsung 957DF CRT at home. I still play a lot of games @1024x768 out of habit. That and a 100Hz refresh rate is sweet

I've got a Gateway 19" LCD. I play First Person Shooter games mostly at 1024x768 and have never noticed any ghosting or smearing. Had a 19" flat CRT before this and I like the LCD much better. It's a lot easier on the eyes.

i have a dell badged trinitron, and run in 1152 rez. just right for me

This is kinda my story. I bought an NEC 19" monitor last year from Staples for only 70 bucks. Last month I sold that to someone for 200 dollars. I bought the NEC 1545 LCD which is 15". I thought I cant ever go from 19 inch to anything smaller when I had it but you get use to it.

playing games on a 19" monitor should be at least 1280x1024 to get the real detail of the graphics. 1600x1200 is prefered actually.

I just set up a dell computer for my sister, it came with a flat panel 17". It was absolutly gorgeous and crisp, but like Julio, I dont think I can goto a smaller screen size, just BIGGER!!