But I also like to play games and watch movies, and for that, I wanted a single large panel. The only thing that fit the bill was the Apple display.

I purchased it after much ogling of showroom displays, and attached it to my PC's DVI port (with the help of Apple's DVI-to-ADC adapter). Windows XP detected the new monitor, my video card (ATI 9700 Pro AIW) recognized the higher resolutions, and I was instantly using Windows in crystal-clear 1920x1200 resolution, with no dead pixels.

There are a few negatives:

- The brightness does drop a bit at about 45 degrees, so the sides of the screen may appear darker than the center, but only if you sit really close to it, and are really paying attention.
- On a PC, the Power and Brightness buttons do nothing (except glow in a really cool way when touched). You'll have to use whatever display settings your video card driver provides for color, brightness, contrast, etc. As for turning it off, you'll have to either use Windows' screen-saver option for powering the display down after a few minutes, or unplug it.
- The two built-in USB ports don't suport USB 2.0.
- The ADC connector is proprietary to Apple computers (and only a few models - go figure), so you'll have to buy an adapter (either VGA-ADC or DVI-ADC) to hook it up to your PC.
- Even with my Apple-manufactured DVI-ADC adapter, I get a small amount of "static", especially on black backgrounds. My eyes are trained not to notice it anymore, but considering how pricey these are, it's annoying. UPDATE: I have since found a setting in the ATI configuration that fixes this ('Alternate DVI operational mode'). So this is no longer an issue.
- On my PC, the display doesn't show anything until Windows XP has started up. This means you can't see the BIOS diagnostics or boot menu. On forums, some people have reported this as a problem, and some say it works fine for them. If anything ever goes wrong with the boot process, I'm not sure what I'll do.

This is THE monitor to have for Mac or PC (Rating: 5.00)
Review : This monitor was designed to be used with Apple's latest G4 Macintosh product line- A single proprietary cable (called the Apple Display Connector, or ADC) provides power and video information to the monitor as well as USB connectivity to the two port USB hub built into the back of the screen. The 1.5" surrounding bezel is grey, encased in clear plastic, giving it a crystal look matching the G4 Cube or Tower decor.

By utilizing Apple's ADC to DVI Converter (not included- provides backward compatibility with non-ADC Macs such as Apple's Powerbook notebooks) as well as a graphic card with a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port, such as NVidia's GeForce4 4600 or ATI's 9700 Pro, the Cinema Display can be used by both older Macs and PCs. The converter combines AC power, DVI video data and USB data into one port for the monitor's ADC input cable.

The LCD display is roughly one inch taller and two inches wider than two sheets of paper (8.5 x 11) placed side by side- perfect for displaying two full page word processing documents, web page design, or any other applications which might require a number of simultaneous open windows.

There are three minor issues that I noticed. Most monitors have some kind of adjustment buttons... contrast, brightness, hue, tint, etc. Rather than provide external adjustment buttons, The Apple Cinema Display comes with their Apple Displays Software- Apple's "all digital", Mac-only display adjustment solution. PC users must make adjustments to the display via their videocard's driver software. The two touch sensitive buttons on the front bezel are specifically to turn on a G4 Mac and to access the Apple Displays Software... when attached to a PC with the converter, they serve no purpose (although they glow when touched).

Another caveat... Apple doesn't provide an *.INF file for Windows Plug and Play recognition. Windows XP just lists it as a "Plug and Play Monitor". It's an insignificant detail, but when there are few flaws to speak of, the insignificant ones tend to stand out.

Most flat panel displays are suspended from central hinge and mounted on a stand. The size and weight of the 23" Cinema Display make it difficult to implement this, so it stands on three feet- two 2" legs at the base of the screen and a central leg mounted in the back, similar to how a picture frame stands up. This makes the monitor tilt up at an angle, rather than flat in relation to the viewer. I corrected this by putting a video cassette under the back leg.

My Test System: Athlon 2800+, Asus A7N8X+ motherboard, 1Gb PC3200 DDR RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

First, I decided to watch a DVD. I had mixed results, but not due to the display.

Wide-format DVDs can be encoded two ways- either in full widescreen leaving the DVD software/player to create the black bars above and below the image when displayed on a standard monitor or television, or it can be encoded with the black bars as part of the video frames. This produces a normal widescreen look on a 4:3 ratio television or monitor, but a widescreen display will display black borders on the sides. As a result, the first TRON DVD release (not the 20th Anniversary Edition) and the theatrical release of DUNE (not the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series) that I watched had a two inch black border surrounding a widescreen video image.

Both Intervideo's WinDVD and Cyberlink's PowerDVD software exhibited the same problem, although PowerDVD does have a software zoom solution that cuts a little bit off of the left and right sides.

Independence Day and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace were a different story though. The Cinema Display has a 16:10 ratio, while standard widescreen format is a 16:9 ratio. Because of this, playback of true widescreen movies on this monitor will still have black bars above and below the video image.

According to the Apple Website, The Cinema Display has "lightning-fast pixel response for full-motion digital video playback." They weren't overstating their claim either... I could not detect any of the "ghosting" that occurs with some LCD monitors when high action/fast movement video sequences are displayed.

Next I tried gaming. The two games I have installed are Funcom's Anarchy Online and Dreamcatcher's Hegemonia: Legions of Doom.

Hegemonia is a 3D space battle strategy game. It had only a few resolutions available in it's graphics options screen- the highest being 1600 x 1200. When I played this game, like the 4:3 ratio DVDs, there were black bars on each side of the screen. This is understandable though- few games are written to take advantage of non-standard screen resolutions. Other than that the image was sharp and clear with no distortions.

Anarchy Online is a "massively multi-player online role-playing game", or MMORPG. It was written to be able to utilize any display resolution, either in fullscreen mode or in a window, and I was able to play the game easily at 1920 x 1200. Every so often, though, I'd see the screen "twitch" as I played the game... It could've been any number of things, from the software itself, to Microsoft's DirectX API, to a build up of static. When I actually started playing the game, (after about 15 minutes of "ooohing" and "ahhhing" over the image) the twitches were hardly noticable... in fact, I've noticed them occurring less and less, which leads me to believe that it was indeed a minor static issue.

Summary: The 23" Apple Cinema Display is, simply put, one of the absolute best displays on the market. ... more.

Phenomenal product - my best purchase in 2003 (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I bought this monitor from Amazon almost a year ago. I am still amazed at how big it is - and I mean big in terms of usable screen space. I have it hooked up to my Intel based PC using a DVI video card. It is aesthetically beautiful as well which was a nice change of pace from my previous large screen monitors which were not much to look at. Everything looks good on this screen. High res digital photos, computer games, the 2+ full size Internet browsers that I can place side to side and still have room left on the screen. In short I am really glad I spent the money on it.

Works with Windows XP (Rating: 5.00)
Review : Just bought the 23" Apple Cinema display. It works at full res with a GeForce 4 4600 and Windows XP. It has no hardware brightness/contrast controls, but the NVidia driver has these controls + gamma. You can save configurations (such as nighttime, cloudy, office etc) and access them quickly from the taskbar. I have one dead pixel, but at this resolution it is hardly noticeable. You have to buy the DVI to ADC converter to get it to work with an NVidia GeForce card ($$$). There is no loss in quality when using the converter (it is all digital). Color quality and brightness are even across the entire screen. The pixel response is fast for an LCD, but not as quick as a CRT. Still, DVDs and flight simulator rarely exhibit ghosting. Definitely happy with my purchase.