Acer AL1916W 19 inch Widescreen LCD

This is a pretty good monitor for the price. I picked it up for about $310 Canadian plus taxes as a replacement for an old Dell curved screen 17 inch CRT. Out of the box, I had it running in less than 5 minutes. Reading the instructions was not really necessary if you already know how to setup a typical VGA monitor. Combined with a decent video card/ TV tuner, DVD movies come out great. The National Geographic HD demo from XP Media Center looks like it's being shown from an actual HD television. It's in a 16:10 format. There is a button that lets you adjust the 1440 X 900 res which also centers the screen and sets optimum brightness/contrast on your desktop automatically.

Features are pretty basic and brightness/contrast is typical and not anything amazing. My advise is that when you set the full 1440 res, change the setting of your fonts smoothing to "Clear Type" (Right click desktop-Properties, Effects), otherwise you will start noticing the jaggies. Default stand only lets you adjust tilt angle but not height. I'm pretty sure an aftermarket VESA replacement stand/ bracket would give you a much better flexibility. Comes in black or silver finishes.

Be aware that this is a 19 inch "widescreen" so the screen height is about the same as a 17 inch but only wider. An actual 19 inch (non-widescreen) is actually bigger. I've known people who looked disappointed when they saw the screen size and didn't realize that 19 inches is the DIAGONAL measurement. I've read a lot or user reviews and articles on this monitor and there's not many negative feedbacks on this one.

Overall, for typical everyday computing, it's a very good buy.