What's the response time of the iMac's monitor?
Dell has a 30" monitor with the same resolution but the response time is slow at 15ms.
Dell 30" LCD with 2560x1600 resolution for $1,200
Dell has a new Samsung 24" flat panel with wireless keyboard and mouse for $199.
I have a 25" off brand ( I-Inc iH-252HPB ) I bought online at CompUSA with instant rebate for $189 a couple of weeks ago and am thrilled with it's price/performance. It allows me to view/edit two 8.5"x11" documents side-by-side with desktop space left over.
Some say the LCD's don't have the color capability of CRT's but neither my wife nor I could tell a difference between the LCD versus Viewsonic 20" CRT or Viewsonic 17" we previously used on our two machines. I couldn't do a true side-by-side test because one of our machines is a 32-bit Dell P4 and the other one is a 64-bit Dell P4 Xeon. Graphics cards while different, are in the same class.
We've been very happy with the 25" LCD but would like to view/edit letter sized documents side-by-side in MS-Word with all toolbars displayed which will drive us to the I-Inc or equivalent 28" for our other PC once we find one on sale in the $250 range.
Actually, that 2560 by 1600 Dell has more horizontal pixels than the iMac—"27-inch models: 2560 by 1440 pixels "—but the iMac is true 16:9 widescreen movie format rather than the distorted 16:10 of most large screen monitors. Also, the Apple monitor is E-ISP technology, 178º viewing angle with little to no distortion of color or brightness and it's instant-on to full brightness LED backlit instead of CCFL. The Dell monitor on your link seems to have a 8ms response time. nice.
What's the response time of the iMac's monitor?
Looks like 5ms... that's the speed of the E-IPS tech.
That Samsung 25" with keyboard and mouse is a hell of a deal... it's 5ms as well but still CCFL.
For editing documents the color accuracy is not much of an issue, nor is response time, as the documents don’t require complete screen rewrites quickly. For documents raw speed is secondary to the amount of screen real estate available.
I agree that the prices are dropping. I’ve been thinking of getting a cheap second monitor to put next to my iMac just to keep the tool boxes, etc, on.