Well, being a recent retiree on a pension with modest laptop system (below) now with hundreds to spend a year on the hobby instead of thousands, I'm considering an auxillary monitor for use instead of the built in 15" display.An 24 inch Acer which I noticed had some nice comments about in several gaming forums after I googled the model number:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824009154The response time is 2 ms and the native resolution is Resolution 1920 x 1080 and price is $329 American.Meanwhile all seven of the 24" monitors down at Circuit city have a 5 ms response time (slower) and a resolution of 1920 x 1200 (denser) and are priced from $299 to $499 (more expensive mainly).Does this seem like a decent budget priced monitor?Is the unusual resolution a plus or a minus (I'm thinking a plus because would give slightly faster framerates than the other monitors)?

It is a decent price for a monitor. The real question is can your laptop handle driving the monitor at the higher resolution with negligible impact on performance.What version of Flight Simulator are you currently running and at what resolution are you currently running it?The higher resolution will actually decrease your framerates if your CPU and videocard cannot keep up with the higher resolution.You also would want the lowest response time possible to prevent ghosting of your images. So make sure you compare the monitors with something that is framerate intensive. You may find that the monitor with the higher response time provides an unacceptable image for flight simulation.

Sargeki, the notebook is: Core2 Duo T7700 2.40GHz CPU2.0 GB RAMWin XP Pro SP2GeForce 8600M GT 512 MBHDD 160 GB 7200 RPMDisplay is 1280 x 800 (15" wideview).Running FS9 (not FSX) using FSAA getting 20 f.p.s. in stock scenery at dense airports, maybe 50 in deserted areas, but with a photorealistic scenery addon it can go down to about 10 or 12.But it doesn't stutter anywhere now.

Going from 1280x800 to 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 is defintely going to put more of a burden on your system which is going to translate into a performance decrease (less FPS).I would try to see if you could find a retailer that would let you test drive your laptop with your monitor of choice.

Hmm, well maybe I might have to settle for a lesser sized screen, thanks for the heads up!

An alternate tactic is go with higher resolution but retard some FS settings to make up for the performance drop of the increased res.For ex. I run with Autogen off, AI set below 30 and Simple Clouds. This gives me very acceptable performance on a 5 year old computer running at 3072x768 resolution.(Well it's actually 3 monitors- each at 1024x768! The triple wide view however really IS 3072x768 !)Alex Reid

>Well, being a recent retiree on a pension with modest laptop>system (below) now with hundreds to spend a year on the hobby>instead of thousands, I'm considering an auxillary monitor for>use instead of the built in 15" display.>>An 24 inch Acer which I noticed had some nice comments about>in several gaming forums after I googled the model number:>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824009154>>The response time is 2 ms and the native resolution is>Resolution 1920 x 1080 and price is $329 American.>>Meanwhile all seven of the 24" monitors down at Circuit city>have a 5 ms response time (slower) and a resolution of 1920 x>1200 (denser) and are priced from $299 to $499 (more expensive>mainly).>>>Does this seem like a decent budget priced monitor?>>Is the unusual resolution a plus or a minus (I'm thinking a>plus because would give slightly faster framerates than the>other monitors)?One thing I would point out is that 2ms refresh rate is a bit deceiving if you're not familiar with how it's calculated. When you see 2ms, it is measured from gray to gray. 5ms is measured from black to black. Performance wise they are about equal. My 24" Samsung is outstanding and similar models come in under $400 US on Newegg here:http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....1328&name=24%22The top one on the page is on sale for $339 (with a rebate) and I find Samsung to have far better quality and picture than the Acer, having compared them side by side.I bought mine through Newegg after checking it out at a local place. I saved a chunk of change on sales tax and it has been perfect since day one. Some have free shipping as well. Hope this helps you.Regards,Jeff

Having just experienced this, not all LCDs are a-like outside of the refresh rate. I would consider the contrast and brightness values, that speak highly to the quality of the image you will get.The first number speaks to the ability of the LCD to produce true black vs white, the second, how well it will do under less than ideal ambient lighting conditions.I find that the higher the price, the better the numbers in this category, outside of refresh rate and resolution only.Etienne