Although I don't read the forums here enough I do recommend it to a lot of people when I don' t have time to help them with their issues myself, mostly based on having read the site for years. This thread makes me feel good about that! Apologies for the lengthy post but I've been working up to this purchase for ages and as I'm running this 21" at a resolution that's slightly too high for it to avoid feeling cramped on large layouts (it's the resolution I've used for 8 years on last 2 crt's) I am beginning to notice the effects of the eyestrain on my vision. I want to make sure that I get something I can happily live with for a few years until the LED backlights are out in enough volume and have gone through enough revisions to be worthwhile cost/performance wise.
I need to get a new monitor badly and I think 24" is ideal for my needs. My Hitachi 22" crt failed about 7 months ago and I've been limping along on a ViewSonic G225F. While it isn't half bad I feel like I've been waiting years for a decent LCD or three. I've actually got LCD's for every other machine in here, but my primary machine sees most of its use as a Graphics workstation. But I'll enumerate my needs below to make it easier (descending from most important).
1. Print & Web graphics (I do both and most of my money is derived from here).
2. 3d & Video (which includes playback but more specifically production)
3. Audio Production (not much of my income but I do it quite a bit)
4, Gaming
For 1, I use Adobe applications for Print (CMYK and spot color) & sRGB based work. I also use a variety of other applications but things tend to be 'wrapped up' and sent to the printer in Adobe applications as the end stop. For Web work I use a variety of open source tools as well as Photoshop (Fireworks never caught me and I prefer Notepad++ with a few browsers to Dreamweaver).
For 2, I currently use a slightly older version of Softimage XSI, a bit of Blender and a variety of open source tools along with After Effects and a handful of compositors for generating and processing 3d and video content. Final Cut Pro sits on another machine here and isn't a consideration.
For 3, I think just being a 24" LCD that I can bear to look at will be sufficient (audio production). Moving from a CRT to a widescreen LCD will give me a lot more horizontal workspace, which will benefit me in all areas above as well.
And 4, this seems to be the real comprimise here. If I wanted to abandon gaming I could probably go upmarket quite a bit and forget about timing issues in video games. However I have a permanent install of UT2k4 still which gets daily CTF play, and I intend to check out this fall's offerings. I play about 1 other game a month on average, and skip strategy/RPG/MUD style stuff as I dont have the time (FPS games can give me a good gaming experience in a spare hour whereas others always seem to encroach on my schedule). So I am an avid enough gamer that I do care about the overall feel of my experience, but I'm not competitive enough anymore to forgo
I actually started considering the upgrade the instant my Hitachi died, but read about the issues with the various 24" LCD's at the time and decided to hold off to see how a few models were that were upcoming. The only one that hasn't come out now is the Samsung 245t, although I do see now that the 244t stocks are out in most places. The 275t has been out for some time and is somewhat tempting, but it seems it might be a bit large, especially since it has the same effective resolution (and perhaps slightly worse timings?) I guess I could put it behind my desk, but at that point I'd be tempted to just get a 30", which in reality is just too large and would require an SLI configuration to do decent gaming over the next year or so. I can't justify that as a business expense (although I am strongly considering forgetting a quadro this time and getting an 8800GTX).
From reading through this thread it seems the most fitting monitor would be the BenQ FP241W. I see the BenQ FP241Wz on egghead right now, and the price isn't too awful. Is there any other model that might better fit my uses, or does anyone have any info on when the 245t's will be around for comparison?