200-400 bucks on a nice 17" LCD.
LCD's have a native resolution just as CRT's have a native resolution. CRT's native resolution is the highest possible resolution at 60Hz. CRT's are just able to scale downwards with minimal image quality loss as compare to an LCD where things can get blurry and ugly. This is why you will want to keep LCDs at native resolution most of the time, unless they have good scaling abilities, some do. If the one you have doesn't, you will need a good graphics card to get good framerates at 1280x1024 resolutions for 17".
Response time is something to worry about when buy LCDs. The lower the better as it produces less ghosting. Ghosting is like a slow framerate on a CRT. Go play a fast first person shooter on your CRT and limit it to 30fps or 40fps and look at the floor, it's blurry, it'll look something like that, but applied to the entire screen. Currently available is 8ms with 4ms coming soon. 16ms is considered acceptable, but not great. Then again, specs really mean nothing as every manufacturer test their specs differently. This is why many people recommend that you go to a retail store to check out an LCD. This is a problem. LCDs arent' configured best at the retail stores and there probably won't be any game to see them in action. Which sucks. Anyway, ghosting will still be there at 8ms, although, minimal. See, when they say 8ms, it could have reached a max speed of 8ms for a bit and then be on 16-20ms the rest of the time.
Another thing that LCDs have is how many colors they support. Yes some say they support all colors, and I say I'm black. I'm not, no offense to anyone who is. Just to show that they lie. There are panels with 8-bit colors that support all colors, and those with 6-bit color that don't support all colors. So how do they support the rest of the colors. The dither which can leave sparkles in large color areas. Stupid ass manufacturers.
Another important issue with LCDs is the viewing angle. Some LCDs have great viewing angles. Others have crappy viewing angles. The ones you are most concerned with are the verticle viewing angles. I wouldn't get anything under 160 and that's kinda pushing it. The goal is 180, but you'll won't find an LCD like that. If you go beyond the angle threshold you will lose contrast and colors past the angle threshold will get weird.
Another important issue with LCDs is dead pixels. Pixels that are stuck on white only, black only, red only, blue only, green only. They suck and are allowed to ship. These defects are none returnable to almost all companies unless you have a certain amount of them on the screen which is quite frustrating to have one right in the middle. Especially if it's a white on when you are trying to play a dark game/movie or a colored one. Manufacturers say dead pixels are rare. Indeed they are rare compared to the amount of good pixels that are produced. Although, they are not rare on a panel basis. This is true because, if dead pixels were allowed to be returned, prices on LCDs would go up significantly.
If you have no problems with all this stuff, happy sailing. IMO it's too much of a risk for so much money. I'd stick with the CRT. But there are many people out there with great working LCDs that love them and won't ever switch back. You have to make the decision.
This is a pretty decent one for pretty cheap if the specs ring true:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=24-001-171&depa=0, Samsung allows you to return it only if you have 10 dead pixels. Kind of standard in the industry.
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