Installation was about as simple as it gets: I plugged it into my computer and it worked perfectly out of the box. A cute touch is the automatic on-screen message telling you to set your screen to 1280x1024 - you can turn this off through the straightforward on-screen menus.
I immediately saw why everyone is converting to LCDs. The pixels are perfectly crisp and there's absolutely no flicker. This screen has wonderful vibrant colour, strong backlighting and a surprisingly wide viewing angle - about the widest I've seen on any LCD screen. 17" LCDs are a good inch or so larger than their CRT equivalents, since they use the full screen. This screen feels huge. The anti-reflection coating on the screen works superbly, giving it a rich matte finish even in bad light. Update is very zippy, enough to play most games without noticing any blurring.
The black casing is beautiful and simple - and so much smaller and lighter than a bulky tube! The only minor detractor is the slightly unnecessary branding. I know what model of monitor I bought, thank you! The base has a smooth, well-balanced rotation mechanism and the screen can be adjusted up and down easily enough.
Sound quality is nothing special, but if you're concerned about audio you're probably using seperate speakers anyway. The stereo effect is surprisingly good, however. A headphone socket is a welcome addition to the front of the case, saving a lot of scrambling behind the PC.
I'm very happy with my purchase and I'd recommend this monitor to anyone who plans on spending a lot of time at their screen. I've been using the screen at home for a few weeks and every time I go to work I wish I had it with me!
Well. Colors are clean, pictures are great, text is sharp. There are no LCD peculiarities -- moving the cursor or dragging objects doesn't show any ghosting, for instance. It's flicker-free, and it feels noticeably bigger than a 17" CRT.
Once set up, it's bright, easy to view from any angle (basically, if you you can see the front of the monitor, you can read the screen). There are NO dead / bright / funny pixels.
Installation was a snap -- about 10 minutes from the time I opened the box, until it was worked perfectly with Win98. It came up in 1024x768 resolution, which I changed to the recommended 1280=1024, rebooted, pushed two buttons to get the monitor to adjust itself to the video input, and it was installed and working. The only other adjustment I needed was to use large fonts on the desktop, but that's my eyes not the monitor.
And of course it takes up less desktop space, you don't have to be a weight-lifter to move it, it uses much less electricity than the CRT ir replaces, and it's nice looking even turned off.
Finally, the price is right; 17" LCDs seem to be the sweet spot now, and this is a very good one at a really reasonable price (even more if it's on special -- it was when I bought mine).
So why four stars instead of five? The adjustment buttons are TINY (subtract 1/8 star) and on the black case, the impressed labels for them are almost invisible (another 1/8 star). Another 1/4 star in reserve because I did not try the built-in speakers, I haven't really exercised the hardware adjustments, and another 1/2 star because it hasn't been in use long enough to make any guesses about reliability.
Maybe not quite perfect, but HIGHLY reccommended.
