I am really annoyed by the fact that most LCD screens that are sold today don't make any mention of the "so-called" dot pitch. I call it dot pitch but maybe it should be called pixel density or similar. The biggest problem with this is that most 17" LCDs have a native resolution of 1280*1024 - and so do 19" LCDs!!! This means that on a 19" LCD it is much easier to see "jagged edges" - which annoys the crap out of me. I also feel that when comparing a CRT to an LCD at the same screen size and resolution, the "jagged edges" are far more apparent on the LCD screen.
With this knowledge, I feel like not bothering to "upgrade" to an LCD later this year - because it would actually be a "downgrade" in my opinion. CRTs are far superior to LCDs if you are prepared to spend the same amount of money on either of them. I think I will wait until there is a new "breakthrough" technology that cures the "scaling problem" that LCDs suffer from before going out to buy an LCD.
Why can't the native resolutions of LCDs be MUCH higher than they are today? (If a 17" LCD had the same pixel density as my Nokia N73 cellphone it would support a native resolution of at least 2348*1760!!!) Of course this would put quite a strain on any modern graphics card though! So to solve that problem, I think that a more scalable approach would be to have the graphics card "talk" to the monitor in terms of vector graphics and not actual pixels - the monitor could then "decide" for itself how best to display the image using whatever technology it wants. You could then replace the monitor at a later time for one with a higher precision/image-quality etc.
