Dead Monitor (1 down, 2 to go)

Ever notice how just when you think you’re getting ahead and are going to pull ahead of the nasties/bad luck/etc fate steps in and goes “Worse” (old joke from a Bill Cosby comedy routine). So Firefly is in the middle of playing UO or some such thing and boom, monitor flickers and goes black. I take a look and while it’s pretty hot on top, it’s not immensely hotter than my monitor. It does have that hot electronics smell as well, which I’m less thrilled about. After checking plugs and wiggling things (that’s how the techy people do it), I determined “yup, it’s dead”.

sigh

So I grabbed an old 15″ that I had gotten from Cat5 at some point and plugged it in. It does 1024×768 and a bit higher, but on a 15″ monitor you don’t want to go much smaller than that. Doesn’t do over 70hz though, and even at that it’s all funky and squished, so I had to turn it down to 60hz, which means that it’s going to be a pain in the eyes.

So unless the hotness is gone in the morning and it magically turns on, bye bye old monitor, hello new (probably LCD), bye bye money 🙁 Anyone have a suggestion for a reasonably priced (read: $300 or less) 17″ LCD that is sharp and good? Also I know that stores turn up the contrast and people end up picking the crappier monitor because it’s nice and bright and not the better and sharper one. What’s a good way to tell or test in store?

I know it’s really bad to say this too, but I wish this had happened to me so I could get myself an LCD and dump this big bulky CRT. It’d be really mean for me to say that Firefly could have my old monitor so I could get myself a better one (even though one of mine is dying and the week or so I had with the LCD at $ex-work was much nicer on my eyes for coding). Such is life I guess, learning humility and all that. Of course the only reason that I haven’t dumped all the monitors in the house for LCDs at this point is current lack of funds….