I am looking to buy a 17-19'' LCD monitor ranging from 4-500 dollars. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Hi brianquinn. Whichever brand you get, look for a response time of 16 ms or less. The smaller the response number, the less chance of trails from fast moving scenes in games or DVDs. "Response time is basically the amount of time it takes for a liquid crystal cell to go from active (black) to inactive (white) and back to active (black) again. It is measured in milliseconds or (ms). Lower numbers mean faster transitions (eg. 16 ms is faster than 25 ms.) and therefore less visible image artifacts." Take care, Linda

My Benq FP767-12 has a 12ms response time, which is as low as it goes at the moment. It has no ghosting whatsoever in games or films. It is 17" but is equivalent to a 19"CRT in viewable surface area. One bad point is that it just uses a conventional video lead connection rather than the newer DVI input found on more expensive monitors and most modern graphics cards. I'm not sure what kind of difference that makes to the quality? It runs fine as it is, so I guess I can live without DVI for now. I have mine running at 1280x1024 @ 75Hz in windows, although modern games can only run at reasonable framerates at 1024x768 maximum until I upgrade my graphics card. Benq have pretty bad customer support (at least over here in the UK) My monitor arrived DOA (Dead on Arrival) and it took eight phone calls on premium rate numbers and three weeks to get a working replacement. 12ms TFT monitors are only a fraction more expensive than 16ms versions now. AMD Athlon XP2200+ Aero7 lite 512mb Crucial pc2700 Abit NF7-s V2.0 80GB Seagate SATA 120GB Seagate SATA Geforce4 Ti4200 128mb Benq FP767-12 17" 12ms SB live 5.1 Digital

To add to XLWH's comment look for an LCD with very minimal to zero high-motion blurred effect or ghosting and one with a low pixel pitch and high contast ratio, something around (500:1) is good. Also, if you already have a video card with DVI support or plan on buying one in the future, ensure the LCD monitor has this support. I recommend any of these brands NEC, Samsung or Viewsonic. ____________________________ The greatest risk is not taking one

I prefer CRT monitors, unless you're really in a crunch to save space. Happy shopping, Bob

could you explain that whole ratio thing, I always see LCD's that say 600:1 or 500:1 which one would be better? Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 ATI 9800 Pro AMD Barton 2500+ 1024 PC3200 Ram 120gig Maxtor HD Audigy 2 420 watt psu

I would also prefer CRT but thats just me. You must look for LCD's with good response times, no ghosting, etc. I think those 21in. Dell LCD's are pretty good. Abit IS7 Pentium 4 2.8ghz eVGA Geforce FX5900 SE 450/700 OCZ 1GB Performance CL2 Asus K8N-E AMD 64 3000+ ATi 9800 Pro Kingston 1gb