A little over three years ago I bought an Apple Cinema Display. It cost a bundle, but it has proven to be a good investment. In fact, it's lasted through not one, not two, but three laptops. Not to mention, it still blows away most other displays in terms of its color reproduction, viewing angle and industrial design. (It has touch sensitive brightness and sleep controls!)

Unfortunately, however, one of the display's biggest features is also its biggest drawback — at least for people crazy enough to attend college 3,000 miles away from home. UPS charged me upwards of $70 to ship it one-way from Portland to Lewiston. So, at about this time last year, I set about finding myself another big widescreen monitor to plop down on my dorm room's desk. At the time, I reached two conclusions. First, I wanted to buy another Apple display. Second, I didn't want to buy old technology.

Thus I waited. In fact, I spent my entire sophomore year of college waiting patiently for Apple to take the wraps off something new and improved. But Apple never refreshed their Cinema Displays. In fact, they discontinued the 20" and 23" models without replacing them. (I'm not counting the weird 24" LED Cinema Display because it has a MagSafe connector and one of those accursed glossy coatings.)

Now, as I head back to school, I find myself in more or less the same position I was in a year before. I need another display for school, but I don't want to buy outdated technology and I really don't want to buy a piece-of-junk Dell display with a TN panel.

Part of me wants to keep waiting, despite the hit my productivity takes when I'm confined to the relatively small display on my laptop. While other manufacturers do offer displays with comparable image quality, none of them quite have the look of an Apple display. The less superficial, more pragmatic part of me wants to pick up an Eizo or a high-end NEC.

Decisions, decisions.