crusty told me monday that he plans to ship the computer this week. but in the mean time, i've bought a used LCD monitor at a local pc repair shop for about $70. had to sell a few things to get the money but i'm glad i did.
the monitor is a NEC MultiSync 1770NMX flat panel LCD monitor with 2 video input ports, 1 standard VGA and 1 DVI. it also has a 4 port usb hub built in as well as removable speakers that are powered by the monitor itself. here are some pictures of it:
the last picture is of the backside of the speaker bar that is under the screen. i did test the screen on my win2k machine and everything works well. i wasn't able to test the DVI port because i don't have a video card with DVI output. i did get a notice from the on screen menu that the monitor is best used with 1240x1024 resolution. i have the new monitor setup on the left side of my CRT monitor for now but i may switch them around if the new computer becomes my main rig. hopefully my new computer will come sometime around the middle of next week.