I have a 22" NEC secondhand.

Great, no probs.

I will stress, however, that you either see it in operation or get a return policy on it. The first one I bought had convergence problems, took it back and got the one I have now.

Aside from picture, the things that impress me about my NEC are its (relative) small size and weight. It weighs 85 lbs, which is very light for a large monitor (we have had 20" over 120 lbs). Also, the NEC has a short horizontal throw, so it fits easy on a desk.

As far as applications go, if you can pull up a sheet of text at 1280x1024 and it is sharp and you can pull up a large JPEG and it looks good, that is sufficient for a quick test. Move the mouse cursor over the whole screen, look for ghosting or trails.

If you are playing FPS style games, it will take you a couple weeks to get used to looking at larger screen. Until that happens, enemies on the side of the screen will pick you off and you won't see them.