Flat's Where It's At.

The article focuses on the pros and cons of various LCD flat-panel monitors. Flat panels save energy, reclaim desk space and give a brighter and generally crisper image. The 17-inch size makes text look sharp and crisp; 19-inchers simply blow up the same image, which tends to make fonts look jagged and funky. And the smaller size saves money. Upscale units often have height adjustments, and some, like Dell's $375, 19-inch UltraSharp 1905FP and Samsung's 17-inch, $380 SyncMaster 711t, also rotate the screen 90 degrees. But the Dell doesn't come with software to reorient the pixels, so if the video driver doesn't have a "portrait" mode, a Portrait Systems' $40 Pivot Pro software will be needed to do the job. Another feature that bumps up the price: a so-called clear screen that replaces the traditional frosted antiglare surface; although it gives more reflections from the screen, it can be a tradeoff worth considering. Sony's $550, wide-format, multifunction MFM-HT75W, is designed for entertainment as well as computing. ut an annoying new trend puts picture adjustments in a hard-to-use menu instead of giving them dedicated buttons. Another trend is a form-not-function annoyance: black buttons with unreadable black identifiers. Worse: monitors that come with no physical buttons at all, just software that lets you perform adjustments via keyboard and mouse. Nice idea, but with two different computers the $550 Samsung 19-inch 193P+ no-button unit's software caused repeated system crashes. Don't dump that old tube. The EPA doesn't consider personal monitors to be hazardous waste, but lots of states and municipalities beg to differ. Many local hazardous waste venues that accept stuff like paints and pesticides won't take monitors at all. In many cities, a store like Staples, which in Seattle charges $12, will take the old-style monitor.