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My boss finally decided to retire our old CRT monitors and upgrade to the new LCD's (this Samsung SyncMaster 714V 19" LCD Monitor) when he saw a great deal on one of the weekly ads from Circuit City last week (yes the thanksgiving weekend).

I set it up on Friday and was amazed at the picture quality and the bright and crystal clear display. My boss said that he paid about $200 for each after a couple instant and mail-in rebates (I wish I could have gotten one for my home). And with a name like Samsung I was just dying to push these to the limit.


DESIGN :
The screen on this baby is 19 inches diagonally, and like everyone knows, the viewable area is also 19 inches. So you are getting the biggest size for the price. The maximum resolution for this monitor is 1280x1024 at 75Hz. This particular unit that I have on my desk has a black front panel and a black rear panel. This whole unit matches very nicely with my Panasonic KX-T7433 Digital Phone System many other utensils I have on my desk that are black also. So there is no question that its looks will make your desk look ugly.

The buttons on the front panel are actually on the bottom side of the panel which are not easy to operate at first but once you get the hang of it, it will turn out to be very useful. There are two arrow buttons (up or down) that can be used to navigate the settings menu (to change the size, brightness, contrast, and more). There is a Menu button that shows you the whole menu of options that you can use to customize the look on the screen to your needs. The Enter button works hand in hand with the Menu button to help you get into sub menu options. One additional button that is available only on Samsung monitors is the MagicBright (down arrow) button. This button allows you to change the brightness with just one button. The settings are named Custom (user defined), Text (normal), Internet (medium), and Entertain (high). There is a Power button with a little green LED light. When the monitor is on, the LED it lit green and off when the power is off.