Several days ago my life shattered; my monitor broke and without a monitor I can not work.

My Hannspree 28 inch monitor was over 500 dollars so I was at least smart enough to pay an extra 60 some dollars for the 4 year replacement plan at Best Buy. Well, as it turns out, when I called customer service at Best Buy they told me that they have to send the monitor out for repairs and it would take around 3 weeks before I got it back.

When I was getting ready to accept a three week forced vacation some good news finally came my way. Best Buy discontinued my model and I had to select a new monitor for replacement. As it turns out, unless I was misinformed by the Best Buy salesman, Best Buy has stopped carrying oversized monitors. Apparently they do not last and perform anywhere close to what smaller monitor do. That's how I ended up with my Dell 24-inch S2409W monitor.

Unlike my previous monitor that was 529 dollars, this Dell monitor was only 299. I did spend over 2 hours walking back and forth looking at all the selections available before I made my decision, but reading specs and looking at display images for a couple of hours in not nearly enough time to make any concrete statements about this monitor; at least not yet. First I have to play several video games and I have to watch some movies and I have to see how well my Xbox 360 performs hooked up to this monitor HDMI cable. I have about 20 hours ahead of me before I can even start thinking if I like or dislike this Dell product. One thing is or certain: the monitor works at least well enough for me to write this introduction. So far so good, but let's see if things continue this way. I hope they do; the closest Best Buy is 30 to 45 minutes away and I'm sick of the drive.