With age comes great wisdom. I'm not as young as I once was. I have a pair of glasses, bifocal, specifically for viewing monitors. The best way to evaluate a monitor is to use it. Try it in the store and be willing to return it if it doesn't work for you.
Once upon a time I used a low resolution, set for 800x600, 17 inch Packard Bell monitor. It had the advantage of being CHEAP when I bought it. One day it went "ploink" and died.
I looked up the receipt and found out I had paid for an extended warranty. Circuit City (TM) and I had a go 'round. Eventually my PB was replaced with a refurbished KDS Visual Sensations Model VS-7e monitor. The process was painful and time wasting. CCity contracted support out to General Electric, which cut the support to the bone. They needed two (2) tries and I needed many 800 number calls and much time to get the replacement monitor replaced. Primary SIN; they shipped via Roadway Package Service (NOT RECOMMENDED!) I finally had to go to the Roadways Office and deliver the broken replacement monitor for return and then I had to track the packages myself on line, and then make several calls to FIND the Bloody second replacement monitor was still at the Cleveland Office, where I picked it up myself, being unwilling to trust RPS again!
MaMaT has a much more sophisticated 17" Gateway VX 700 monitor, which she uses at 800x600 for most purposes. There is no accounting for taste.
The Linux boxes use inexpensive 15" KDS KD-5250 P-n-P monitors from MEI/MicroCenter which double as backups and test monitors for visiting computers.
Tigger uses an elderly 14" Packard Bell monitor about ten years old. It bumbles along at 640x480, it's a little rough by modern standards...but the thing keeps working and working and working without a problem, year after year. It started on a 486 SX, which was upgraded to a DX, replaced with a Pentium 166 and IT WORKS!
Almost as old is an ancient MAG 1594, currently doing server service quietly in the background. It had to go back to the factory under warranty when it was 8 months old. I had to pay shipping one way, which means I could have bought a better monitor (I looked at the NEC) and saved money. Hindsight is always 20/20.
The Local Area Network
With six computers in our office a peer-to-peer LAN was the obvious solution. Two Netgear FB-104 100MPS network kits were purchased and linked together. Make sure you push the uplink button on ONLY one of the switches if you do this. We also replaced most of the 15 foot kit cables with shorter Cat 5 cables. The Windows 98 systems, Pooh, Rabbit and Nick, linked automatically, Tigger was a problem, but somehow (MAJOR reinstall from reformat, because the NEC version of Windows 95 fights changes tooth and nail) it was recognized and can be used.
Sitting at her workstation with three computers operating MaMaT configured RedHat 5.2 to recognize the LAN, permissions and admin are still pending. It is a thing of considerable beauty, when you save to a LAN drive as fast as the local hard disk.
Oh rapture unbearable!
A pair of APC Back-UPS Pro 420s protect the server and MaMaT's workstation. We do not run the PowerChute shutdown program on the server. The software prevents modifications to software and is most annoying.
Miscellaneous Neatstuff
We use an external, parallel port, Iomega ZIP 100, because it is the most common of the large capacity drives, and genealogists love them.
We also installed an Imation LS-120 internal IDE drive for compatability with my office. It even reads 1.44MB floppies faster.