11/16/98 FLAT PANELS THAT WON'T FLATTEN YOUR BUDGET

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FLAT PANELS THAT WON'T FLATTEN YOUR BUDGET
The skinny monitors are looking better and costing less

THE IBM T55A
Photoillustration by Roger Kenny

What a difference a year makes. In 1997, those oh-so-sleek flat-panel monitors were oh-so-expensive. At $2,700 a pop, nobody but a die-hard enthusiast or the beneficiary of the latest Silicon Valley initial public offering would spring for one.
This year, monitor manufacturers have pushed prices down, while maintaining--even improving--performance. Although high-end flat panels can still cost upwards of $3,000 each, a slew of skinny displays are selling for as little as $600. For the space- and style-conscious, it could be money well spent. ''I'm not screaming about the price,'' says Kevin M. Clark, an independent photography director who spent $1,000 on a 14-inch liquid-crystal monitor sold by ViewSonic Corp. in Walnut, Calif. ''The payoff is worth it,'' he says.
Flat-panel displays--imagine your current monitor without the big butt--will account for less than 1% of all the computer monitors purchased in the U.S. this year. But check out the product's growth. That translates to 188,000 screens in 1998, or nearly five times the number sold last year, says Stanford Resources Inc., a research firm in San Jose, Calif.
To get a better view of these displays, I happily cleared the clutter from my desk and plugged in a few of the latest svelte screens. Immediately, an extra 8 inches of space opened up before me. (It was just enough room to spread out my notepads and reclutter my desk.)
In the TV universe, several different flat technologies are competing with each other. These include an expensive approach called plasma that is well-suited to very large screens. When it comes to monitor replacements, though, choices are more limited. All the popular Models are liquid-crystal displays. They don't get much bigger than 15 inches. But at that size, an LCD will weigh just half as much as a comparable cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor. And it's typically about 20% as deep.
BREATHING ROOM. Power users can relate to that. After buying 600 IBM (IBM) flat-panel displays last year, CIBC Oppenheimer Corp. in New York was able to squeeze 53 traders in a room that previously housed just 12 executives. ''And we didn't pack them in like sardines,'' says Managing Director Kosmas T. Spiridellis.
Viewing area is another flat-panel selling point. When you're talKing about CRTs, the typical ''17 inches'' you see advertised are a diagonal measurement that includes portions of the screen you can't actually see. Precious inches are hidden behind the plastic casing. LCDs, by contrast, come exactly as advertised. You see the whole screen, so a 15-inch flat-panel gives you the equivalent of a 17-inch CRT.
Of the screens I personally tested, the ViewSonic VPD150 came out on top. Its 15-inch panel can be twisted from a horizontal to a vertical angle for better viewing of oblong images. The image also seemed sharper--and others have had the same reaction. ''When I fired it up, I said, 'Boy, this is the future of monitors,''' recalls Clark. He also says his ViewSonic is brighter than his old 17-inch CRT monitor.
Naturally, there's a dark side to flat-panel monitors. Straight out of the box, they're harder than CRTs to hook up. When I first plugged in a NEC (NIPNY) MultiSync 1500M, the letters and icons on the screen looked out of focus. I called for help and was informed by a technician that ''you can't just plug them in and go.'' Why? Flat panels and CRTs manage picture elements, or ''pixels,'' in different ways. Images on the flat panels can be brighter and sharper. But it takes some adjusting of the computer's settings to get there. Despite adjustments, I never got the NEC's settings straight, so the screen had an odd, punched-in look.
JAGGED EDGES. I was also annoyed by jagged edges in the text. Monitor makers say that the ''jaggies'' disappear as you step up from an XGA to a superXGA monitor. To experience that firsthand, I sampled Silicon Graphics Inc.'s (SGI) much-praised digital 1600SW model--the same 17-incher that Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman William H. Gates III ordered for his desktop. The picture quality made me want to jump into the screen. (But the $2,500 price tag made me want to jump out of the window.)
Compared with CRTs, flat panels also require more nerding around at the back of your PC. The Silicon Graphics and ViewSonic models I tested all forced me to install graphics cards in my PC. A real techie can probably do that in a couple of minutes. For others, it could take most of the afternoon.
There's another drawback with flat-panel monitors. Just like laptop LCDs, the new flat panels don't look good from any angle but straight on. Or rephrasing that slightly: The picture becomes a big, ugly smear. Forget about playing PC games with a buddy at your side.
All in all, these monitors are pretty nifty. For most of my trials, I had colleagues ogling over my shoulder. O.K., so they're at least three times more expensive than a top-notch 17-inch CRT. And prices won't drop significantly for several months. But if you want to see the future, this is the only way to view it.
By Roger O. Crockett in Chicago

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