When Dell had a fire-sale on 17" LCDs, I ordered one to join the LCD on my desk at work (and then had to order a twin-headed AGP Video card to make both LCDs work together). Wow. Putting email, IM, and reference stuff on one screen while coding on another rocks. Plus the laptop for 802.11 client testing and other sundry stuff makes for > 3M pixels. I recommend it.
