I don't get how people get eyestrain with CRTs... I only get eyestrain when my CRTs are 60Hz... otherwise I run them at 75Hz 24/7, no eyestrain at all. If you check out the pics of my rig in my sig(rhymes hehe), I sit in front of a 21" and a 14" over 10 hours a day... I never get eyestrain. However, when I look at my sister's 15" BenQ LCD, I get tons of eyestrain trying to look through the mesh that divides the pixels, it feels like looking at a tv. Well anyways.. just stating my experience how it's the other way around for me.
I also used my neighbor's NEC 1760NX LCD... very nice screen, that's the only LCD I ever seen with contrast comparable to a CRT, with the sharpness so I can't see those lines that divides the pixels. However, on a black screen, the top is still brighter than the bottom(poor viewing angles). There's no ghosting at all.
He also owns an 18.1" Hitachi LCD, it's a discontinued model now. It has 32ms access times, and it ghosts like mad. The contrast looks comparable to my sister's 15" BenQ LCD, the backlight is crap, I can see blotches on a black screen. The viewing angles suck worse than the NEC.
Conclusion, from my experience, I would stick with large CRTs(I guess I'm used to 1600x1200). Otherwise if you get an LCD, I wouldn't get anything other than NEC. I also checked out LCDs at CompUSA(I know it's a bad place, but good for comparison), and none of the LCDs came close to the contrast of an NEC, which NEC is the only brand that has acceptable contrast for me.