The Dell 2405FPW is good hardware. Dell continues to make excellent LCDs at reasonable prices. The 2405 is much like the 2001, only 24" wide and 1920x1200. It has a good "scale but preserve aspect ratio" option for 4x3 video sources.

My only complaint is that it's really bright with a gamma of about 2.0 Photos look a bit washed out. I still haven't figured out which of three different calibration techniques I should use to get this under control, but I'm about to do some serious photo editing so I need to figure it out.

If you're thinking about buying a new LCD you may want to hold off a couple of weeks. Dell's about to introduce the 2407FPW. It's major feature is the evil HDCP, but the new model may make the 2405FPW cheaper. They're also going to inrtoduce the 3007WFP, a 30" LCD at 2560x1600. That sounds really cool but honestly the 24" is already too big. The viewing angles mean that the screen doesn't appear to be constant brightness.

One practical nuisance with widescreen LCDs; many full screen games don't use the extra width. At worse you just play with black bars on each side, for more info see widescreen gaming forum. I've compounded the problem by hooking my other LCD up as a second monitor, 1200x1600. Everything I've run still works, but some programs get a bit confused.

techgood
  2005-12-22 16:27 Z