Ever wish the windows that appear on your computer monitor could be larger without compromising your onscreen real estate? A larger monitor might just do the trick. And the good news is that price drops now make LCD monitors a reasonable option to consider.

Traditional monitors use a cathode ray tube to display images. This technology shoots electrons at a very high speed against a phosphor-coated screen to create images. The technology requires space in order to work, which makes it bulky.

Newer monitor technologies utilize the much less space hogging LCD screen. Liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors, which are also used to power notebook computer displays, work by controlling hundreds of thousands of individual screen pixels to produce the screen image.

Probably the most touted advantage of having a LCD monitor is the space savings. They typically take up about one third of the depth that a traditional monitor can take. This can be a real advantage when working in a confined space. And the slim design is certainly more attractive from a sheer aesthetics perspective.

LCD monitors also offer several additional advantages. The technology produces very crisp-looking images on a flat screen that can make viewing easier. Image distortion is also not an issue with LCD monitors since the technology is not affected by magnetic fields the way a regular CRT monitor can be. It also requires less energy to run than a regular monitor. And for those businesses that often move people around, the lightweight LCD can be a welcome alternative to the bulky CRT monitor.

The primary disadvantage of LCD monitors is their resolution support. While they can technically work at multiple resolutions, your best results are by setting the monitor at its native resolution. In the case of 15-inch LCDs, that is typically 1024x768 and with 17-inch LCDs, it is a maximum 1280 x 1024 resolution.

While these resolutions are fine, they may fall short for those who are used to working at higher resolutions on equivalently-sized CRT monitors. For your reference, a 15-inch LCD monitor sports a screen size that is about equivalent to a 17-inch CRT monitor, which has a typical 15.6 inch viewable screen. Similarly, a 17 or 18-inch LCD monitor has about the same screen size as a 19-inch traditional monitor.

Recent price drops for 15-inch LCD monitors make them a reasonable purchase these days. You can now buy a decent model for $320 to $400. This is only somewhat more than the $200-$300 you would pay for a 17-inch traditional monitor. Plan to pay a serious premium for larger LCD monitors, though. A 17 or 18-inch LCD monitor will cost $750 to $1200 versus $300-$500 for a 19-inch CRT monitor.