Like the Star Trek viewscreen

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great display quality; DVI connectivity; Built-in USB Hub; Fast performance.

Cons: Still got wires. Could still be cheaper. A bit on the heavy side.

The Bottom Line: 
Great display at a great price. That's a winner.

Author's Review
If you read my postings, you can clearly see how much I love my computer equipment. Monitors, however, have never been that big of a deal for me. After I went to 17", everything was pretty much done. Until now.

I got the 20.1" widescreen Flat Panel from Dell and it has competely changed my computing experience.

DISPLAY QUALITY
This display quality is fantastic. I was a little skeptical as friends of mine have flat panels whose displays aren't that great. When I was doing graphic design work (before business school) I was very concerned about that. The CRTs still had better resolution and color matching.

But the Dell 20.1 is great all the way around. It's brighter than any CRT I've ever used and the colors are the same.

PERFORMANCE
So I'm not an expert on rating display performance. But here's what is best for me with this display:
- Quick start-up. My last CRT took almost 35 seconds to "warm" up. This display is almost instantaneous.
- This display also has a 4-port USB hub. So I've been able to wire up my other USB Hub into this display so that to reconnect to all of my peripherals (external HD, Printer, Treo Connector, Axim Connector) with only one USB connection.


SIZE
As other posters have noted, it's not as light as it's Apple cousin. The specific design difference is the base which comprises most of the weight.

But you know what? So what. I don't plan on carrying around my display anyways. Furthermore, the Apple display is designed to be shown very close to the desktop surface. But the Dell is much more versitile in that I can raise/lower it and rotate it left or right. I can also rotate the display 90" so that I can see things in a Portrait (vs landscape) format.


PRODUCTIVITY GAINS
So where's the beef. What value does a new display really have?

Here's a few metrics:
- I can get 2 browser windows side by side showing CNN.com and ESPN.com.
- With Excel, at 80% zoom, I can see Column Z and Row 34.
- I can still work on my laptop and watch a movie/video in full screen next to me. This helps when I'm watching video lectures.
- I don't have to watch DVDs with my girlfriend on my laptop screen anymore. This is a much nicer experience.

COST
I got this display for $432. The Apple display is $800. And I argue that the Dell display is better.

So maybe I'm crazy, but I like the cost savings.


CONNECTIVITY
This display has more connectivity than I had originally thought. It has the standard VGA, but it also has DVI and S-Video for an external DVD player. So there's a lot of options with this display. You can hook it up to a variety of devices (even a Mac if you really want it).

The front controls make it easy to switch between the different channels as well. There's numerical notations at the base that show which channel is selected.