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My monitor sucks. It's now giving a high pitched whine. I showed it to my brother and he can't hear anything. The volume changed based on how bright it is versus how dark. It's bugging the hell out of me.

The older one I used made a really loud almost arcing noise after a while. I always run them at the maximum refresh rates because my eyes are sensitive to it. They weren't always sensitive. My first computer had the shittiest 15" monitor you could imagine. But the phosphors were so slow that 60Hz didn't even matter. The only thing that did hurt my eyes in those days was 1024x768. It was interlaced, ran at 72Hz (meaning it was effectively 36Hz for each set of rows). That was headache fodder.

So I take a look on Newegg to see what I can see for monitors in the 19" persuasion.

4.

4 monitors to choose from. Everything else is LCD.

PROBLEMS WITH LCDS:
a. Response time. The response time you see on the label corresponds to the fastest time across all changes of pigment. For a while that corresponded to small changes and it was REALLY SLOW to change from all black to all white. Hence the ghosting. Now displays are really fast going from all black to all white and back again. But more subtle changes take longer. There's something called "charge overdrive" that really improves dramatic change response times, but can slow down subtle changes a lot. A typical "gamer 12ms" LCD panel can take as long as 30ms to change shades of red. So instead of normal ghosting all over the screen you will get SELECTIVE ghosting and pink hues everywhere. CRTs have consistant timing always.

b. Color definition. LCD's don't really produce light. There's a light behind it and each cell blocks the light to some degree to "produce" light. This means that contrast becomes an issue. CRTs are consistant in color definition across settings, LCDs are finicky. Cranking up the brightness can wash out colors and dark brightness can mute colors excessively.

c. Refresh rates. LCDs don't have refresh rates. They stay in the state they are in, polled by the video card to change. It's almost like the monitor has memory all its own. (it doesn't, really, there's a lot of technological mojo that goes on.) Running an LCD on 60Hz looks the same as running it at 100Hz. The only difference is that at 100Hz is that the video card is sending the complete screen over the cable to the monitor at 100 times a second, meaning changes have a higher time resolution. Ultimately it doesn't mean much, since the pixel can be requested to change while it's changing. A 10ms response time can catch up with 100Hz, except that longer times will be interrupted and change in possibly a different direction. CRT refresh rate is a refresh rate.

d. DEAD PIXELS. All LCDs are prone to dead pixels, or dirt. The first Game Boy Advance SP I got had a bright pixel. It wasn't that, really, it was a speck of white dust between the glass plate and the plastic cover. I sent it off and they fixed it free of charge (shipping included also). PSPs aren't that kind. Sony won't replace them unless they have 5 or more pixels. Some manufacturers won't replace monitors unless there are 10 dead pixels. Some don't consider a pixel "dead" unless it's all black or all white... it's possible to have pixels stuck on any maximal color (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta).

Looks like I'm stuck for now.

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