Couple of thoughts:
1) Make sure you know what the dead-pixel return policy is for whatever place you buy it from. Many, many vendors will ONLY accept a LCD as a return if you have 8 or more dead or stuck pixels, or >4 adjecent ones. Needless to say, having 7 dead pixels would be a MAJOR annoyance/distraction, but depending on the vendor it may be a case of "too bad". Just know what you're getting yourself into.
2) There are different grades of screens. The 'high end' ones will cost a little more, but are pretty much guaranteed to have no dead pixels. The bargain bin brands are very likely to have one or two, since they can save a lot of money by buying lower grade (=semi-rejects) from the LCD screen manufacturer
I have a no-name (advueue) myself, with one pixel permanently stuck to red. But the price was right, so can't complain too much..
If you stick with the big names, you have much less chance of dead pixels than when you go for the budget brands or the never-heard-of-them-before ones.
3) High contrast and fast response time are big selling points, high brightness not so much. My screen is 400cd/m2, and it's so ungodly bright that I have to turn it all the way down and do a software gamma adjustment over it to keep my eyes from burning out. It's great after that. ;-)
If you haven't used them much, be aware that a stand-alone LCD monitor will typically be much brighter than a laptop LCD screen, since power conservation is much less of an issue when you're not running off a battery.
4) DVI will give you a much crisper screen than VGA, since it doesn't have to do a digital -> analog -> digital conversion, with all the assosiated fuzzyness. with VGA, it will look at the signal and try to figure out where the pixel boundaries are, etc. With DVI it knows *exactly* where each pixel is located, and you won't have color bleeding and such which can occur with analog VGA, where one pixel may interfere with the next).
If you are planning to get one at a brick-and-mortar store, you may want to see if they are willing to hook it up for you to check for defects first, can save you a LOT of headaches later, depending on the return policies.
(That's also one advantage of buying one at a non-techie store such as a large department store -- you have a much smaller selection and all that, but most of those will accept returns for any reason, so you can typically bring 'em back even if you 'only' have one dead pixel, because you 'didn't like the color' or whatever.)
1) Make sure you know what the dead-pixel return policy is for whatever place you buy it from. Many, many vendors will ONLY accept a LCD as a return if you have 8 or more dead or stuck pixels, or >4 adjecent ones. Needless to say, having 7 dead pixels would be a MAJOR annoyance/distraction, but depending on the vendor it may be a case of "too bad". Just know what you're getting yourself into.
2) There are different grades of screens. The 'high end' ones will cost a little more, but are pretty much guaranteed to have no dead pixels. The bargain bin brands are very likely to have one or two, since they can save a lot of money by buying lower grade (=semi-rejects) from the LCD screen manufacturer
I have a no-name (advueue) myself, with one pixel permanently stuck to red. But the price was right, so can't complain too much..
If you stick with the big names, you have much less chance of dead pixels than when you go for the budget brands or the never-heard-of-them-before ones.
3) High contrast and fast response time are big selling points, high brightness not so much. My screen is 400cd/m2, and it's so ungodly bright that I have to turn it all the way down and do a software gamma adjustment over it to keep my eyes from burning out. It's great after that. ;-)
If you haven't used them much, be aware that a stand-alone LCD monitor will typically be much brighter than a laptop LCD screen, since power conservation is much less of an issue when you're not running off a battery.
4) DVI will give you a much crisper screen than VGA, since it doesn't have to do a digital -> analog -> digital conversion, with all the assosiated fuzzyness. with VGA, it will look at the signal and try to figure out where the pixel boundaries are, etc. With DVI it knows *exactly* where each pixel is located, and you won't have color bleeding and such which can occur with analog VGA, where one pixel may interfere with the next).
If you are planning to get one at a brick-and-mortar store, you may want to see if they are willing to hook it up for you to check for defects first, can save you a LOT of headaches later, depending on the return policies.
(That's also one advantage of buying one at a non-techie store such as a large department store -- you have a much smaller selection and all that, but most of those will accept returns for any reason, so you can typically bring 'em back even if you 'only' have one dead pixel, because you 'didn't like the color' or whatever.)