It's a monitor, how hard can it be to set up? Plug it in to the AC outlet, into your computer's VGA port, and turn them both on. When they have finished starting up (the monitor only takes a few seconds), I recommend hitting the auto adjust button on the LCD.

One of the biggest reasons I bought this monitor was to save desk space. My old CRT monitor was so big, I had to use a monitor stand with a pull out keyboard drawer just to have room for a keyboard on my undersized desk. Now, with this flat panel monitor, I have room for a keyboard and then some on my desk. Furthermore, this monitor comes with provisions for a wall mount, so you would not have to use any desk space at all, if you so wish.

Not only does it take up very little space, but it looks good doing it. The black plastic shell looks so much better than any beige monitor (CRT or LCD), it's hard to imagine getting anything else (except of course and Apple display). The only blemishes to the overall look are the power supply and the stand. The power supply is an external brick, which will take up extra room under your desk. The neck of the stand is built into the monitor, which means there will be an obtrusion if you decide to wall mount it. Nonetheless, the overall look of the monitor is still very stylish.

Of course, just because a monitor looks good doesn't mean it works well. Therefore, let's examine different aspects of this display, starting with the image quality. I can attest that there is absolutely no blurriness in this monitor whatsoever. The text is extremely crisp, and pictures look great. I cannot image how these could look any better, even on a more expensive display.

Not only is the image quality very good, but the backlighting is unbelievably bright. The 370 cd/m² (nits) brightness rating is lower than some LCD displays, but well above the average 100 cd/m² (nits) brightness rating of typical CRT. I had to use the controls to turn the brightness and contrast down to about 10% each, and it is still plenty bright enough. This is great for the longevity of the monitor, as the backlight is normally the first thing to go on an LCD monitor. Being able to keep these settings low means the backlight will last longer.

Another difference between CRT and LCD monitors is with resolution scaling. Every LCD monitor has a native resolution (this monitor's is 1280x1024, which provides over 1.3 million pixels), and using lower resolutions means the monitor has to use multiple physical pixels to display a single pixel. This normally means a lower quality image, and slightly more blurring. I used this monitor at 1024x768 for about a week in mirroring mode with the iBook. It was less sharp than when running at the native resolution, but text was still very readable and overall quality was more than acceptable.

These features are all nice, but what gamers and movie watchers are looking for is how well it performs with a lot of motion. This particular monitor has a response time rating of only 14 milliseconds, which is one of the better ratings on the market today. To test out how this display deals with games, I launched up Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004. After playing both for a while, I noticed absolutely no ghosting. This is coming form someone who can't stand the flicker of a CRT when it is set below 85 Hz, so I would be able to easily tell if there were ghosting effects.

However, not everything is so rosy. The on-screen controls are difficult to learn, and require a boatload of button presses to get anything done. This is do to using only 4 buttons for the controls. Luckily, there is a handy auto setup button which will set all sorts of settings for you. Normally, you won't have to touch the controls after using this button.

The Acer AL1714CB gets honors in two of the three intangible areas. First, I just cannot say enough about the price of this monitor. Hunting around, it is easy to find it in the $250 range, which is just tremendous for a quality LCD display. Also, the warranty is exceptional for such a low cost monitor. This thing comes with a limited 3 year parts, labor, and backlight warranty, which tells me it is built to last (a company cannot afford to sell something with a 3 year warranty that will only last 1 year, they would go bankrupt in no time).

However, the place where this monitor really comes up short is with documentation. For something like this, I would expect a paper manual. If your monitor dies, how are you going to read the PDF to try to diagnose the problem? However, it only comes with a description of the warranty, a description of the environmentally friendliness of the display, and a quick start guide. In fact, even the PDF manual is only about a dozen pages long, and does not provide a very good description of anything. Acer could really benefit in working on the documentation of their monitors.

One area in which all LCD monitor buyers are concerned is with dead pixels. I am happy to report that there were no dead pixels in this display (tested with LCD Test 1.0). This is not a guarantee that all monitors of this brand/model will have no dead pixels, but it is a good sign. Unfortunately, the dead pixel policy of Acer displays isn't the greatest, allowing up to 16 for this particular model. However, they do only allow one dead pixel in the center area of the screen, which is very good.

Another problem area with G5 users using the supplied DVI to VGA adapter is not getting the full resolution. I can attest that all resolutions are selectable that this monitor supports with that very setup.

I recommend this monitor to anyone who doesn't need exact color replication (CRTs are still the preferred breed here). It works great for everything the average user would need: crisp text, clear picture, and no ghosting in games or movies. At this price, nearly everyone should be jumping on the LCD bandwagon.

Pros	Cons
Very low cost Saves desk space Very bright Crisp text/graphics Scales to nonnative resolutions well No ghosting in games Uses less power/generates less heat than a CRT Auto setup button is extremely nice Full 16 Million colors (24 bits) means no dithering	Controls can be confusing Only has analog (VGA) connector, no digital (DVI) External power supply is large
9/10 stars