It is so choice

With the spoils of an unexpected tax refund in hand (don't get me started about taxes), I decided it was time to replace the 20" LCD I've had for the past three years.

The old monitor has served well, and will continue to do so in some reduced role. Taking its place at my workstation is a Dell 3007WFP 30-inch LCD. Yeah, a Dell, oddly enough. To my understanding, there's only one LCD panel manufacturer that builds the 30-inch LCD panels, and I believe it's a Korean company, maybe Samsung. But Samsung doesn't sell a 30-inch monitor to the public. What they do is sell the raw panels to Dell, HP, and Apple for use in the 30-inch monitors for consumers.

For a few hundred more, I could have opted for the HP version of the exact same panel. For significantly more, the Apple. You see why I went Dell. I believe I have chosen wisely, to paraphrase a popular treasure-hunting movie.

The image is crisp and the color contrast is very good. Obviously, the most striking aspect is the sheer resolution. 2560 x 1600. That's over four million pixels. At work, with three 20" LCDs side-by-side, I have 5.7 million pixels at my disposal. But that's three monitors. Packing nearly as many pixels into one panel is much nicer. The only thing better would be several 30" monitors, or something even larger with higher pixel density.