You will not get 1600x1200 or above in anything less than a 20" LCD. If high resolution is vitally important to you, then yes you will need to get a larger LCD. The thing is that the actual pixel density doesn't increase much. You simply get the same density with a larger screen area, and therefore "higher resolution". The resolution of the unit taken as a while is higher, and so yes you can display more "virtual area" on your screen as a result, but you will not (for example) see finer detail, and pixels will not be less noticeable (in contrast with high resolution CRT's which can go up to 2048x1536 in 21" size, where you will see finer detail). The other thing to keep in mind with larger size LCD's is that the response time is typically lower than with smaller ones. The larger LCD's usually get technology innovations later than the smaller ones as generally speaking it is easier and cheaper to introduce new advances on smaller systems. The response time can definitely be an issue if you are a gamer and sometimes also for watching movies, or anything else with fast motion. My roommate has an LCD with a 12ms response time and as an avid gamer he finds it to be a bit too slow, with some noticeable ghosting. I think 8ms might be acceptable, but possibly even lower would be needed. Unfortunately the quoted manufacturer response times are also not always "accurate", or at least not all measured in the same way, so you may want to read the in-depth reviews at a site like http://www.tomshardware.com/ to get more realistic numbers. 19"-21" is probably the "sweet spot" for LCD's at this point. You get the best price-to-size ratio at 17", but 19" is close enough that it's worth the jump. Anything larger and you start to run into seriously escalating costs. Generally you will be limited to 1280x1024 on a 19" LCD, so if that simply isn't high enough for you, you will have to go larger. I still wouldn't recommend larger than 23" though. At 23" you start to be able to do 1920x1200, and that's really about the limit for desktop-oriented LCD's. Anything larger and you probably wouldn't want it on your desk. Apple's 30" "cinema" display notwithstanding. ;) Even that only does 2560x1600, which is larger in the width only because it is a widescreen monitor. Eventually LCD's, or a similar "flat/thin" technology, will be competitive for color critical work. In fact there are advances going on right now that make LCD's far more color-accurate and give LCD's much higher dynamic and contrast range than CRT's (HDR LCD's). However for the moment most LCD's are definitely sorely lacking in color reproduction. They can't reproduce a true black - period - (it's always a sort of gray) and the viewing angle issues mean that even if you're viewing square on, there is some amount of color, contrast, and brightness distortion at the edges of the screen (LCD users: you may not notice it, but it's there and measurable!). So yeah, if absolute color accuracy is vital (usually this is for print work - web work usually can't assume color accuracy because of the variability in people's home displays!), then an LCD is not a good idea at the moment. But otherwise, provided you are aware of the issues (no true black, potential response-time issues if you're a gamer, and viewing angle issues), and you buy a quality LCD, you should enjoy the benefits of lower desk-space usage, lower emissions, and lower power use. But I for one won't be buying an LCD for my main system any time soon. - Oshyan