Warning : This is a bit of a rant.
As IT manager for a six campus TAFE Institute here on the Sunshine coast, and.... Ex Service Manager for Samsung Australia (the largest Korean Manufacturer of CRT picture tubes and second largest tube manufacturer in the world, if you dont believe me take the back off your TV) let me give you some technical background.
LCD or Plasma screens are marketing hype, mostly, yes they look sexy and the colours can be vibrant but the dot pitch resolution and the way that they colour converge leaves them looking pretty ordinary at high resolutions against a good quality CRT at one tenth the price. In short, if you are serious about high end graphic output and you work all day at your PC then buy a good CRT, if you want to impress your friends and have the latest technology but not necessarily the best image then but a LCD, weight and size should have NOTHING to do with it, buy a bigger desk if required but dont buy garbage becasue your desk wont cater for the good stuff. Now as for resolution, 1024 X 768 is the chosen resolution of most Govt agencies (including this one) and most web developers as it is the optimum resolution for web sites to be developed, 800 X 600 if your near blind and as high as your video card will allow if your in to graphics. Remember that displaying an image is not the same thing as generating it, that is a function of your video card and you can have a 50" monitor if you want but your $24.95 video card will let you down. Then comes the whole question of animation and resolution, ie. Gaming or video production, lets not go there, as you can see it is quite a complex issue and like buying a telescope, should be looked at holistically not just based on wow factor. For what its worth, I started in the computer game in 1983 and we had 320 X 200 (CGA) 8 colour screens if we were lucky and mono (Green or amber) high resolution 640 X 480 if we were not. Cheers, Dennis.