Top advice from Orac: Other companies are still playing catch up with the latest Samsung models and their 500:1 contrast ratio. Remember, however that an LCD only works at one 'native' resolution - all others are software and electronic kludges and it shows.
That said it is horses for courses and if your bent is towards graphics intensive gaming or critical colour reproduction the CRT screen still wins out and, these days, offers incredible value for money.
Rob