Apple 20"Cinema or Dell 2005FPW or Dell 2405FPW

Question

I'm looking for a new LCD display and have narrowed my options down to these three. Main use will be Photo retouching and iMovie,
I have a 1.6ghz G5 Powermac currently using a 17"CRT Studio Display
Any comment or experiences would be appreciated
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Answer 1

Reviews would point out the Dells have a different backlight that is brighter and produces more faithful colours unless you are working with print media where the ACDs backlight produces a more, don't have the technical term, muddied colour representation that will faithfully reproduce the colours that can be output in print form. If you had clients that looked at your images on a stock Dell and then saw the printed output they wouldn't like it because the colours to them looked more vibrant on the Dell than what they got on paper. (see anandtech reviews, etc.)
iMovie wouldn't be a worry. That said you should be adjusting down the brightness of the Dell (through the individual colours, not the limited brightness control in the on-screen-menu) and create a custom colour profile, which means calibrating it if you do any form of print work.
If you weren't mentioning anything dealing with printed works I would say the Dell would be a fine out-of-box monitor with the least effort to get working right away. With print work I still lean towards the ACD for people wanting the least hassle to work with print.
I don't do print work, I work with photographs and graphics for the web and the Windows colour profile is the default in that world which is fine (Dell's are tuned to that out of the box) The Apple colour profile is (ACD) tuned for print.
Re 2005FPW to 2405FPW its your choice. Also consider ergonomics with any of these monitors. I found that with the larger displays on my desk that my head/viewing angle led to strain in my neck and shoulder/back muscles which would cramp up after extended view.
If you want to in future buy a HDTV tuner with DVI output then keep in mind that the 2005FPW is just a hair too short on vertical lines to be truly capable of displaying the full 1080 format of HDTV.
Lot's to think about. For me, I went with the 2005FPW. At the time the 20" ACD was well over $1,100 to buy. The 2005FPW I got for $460 which was more than half the ACD. The LCD screen is the same, the brighter backlight and logic boards are different (more inputs on the Dells, and USB2.0 ports). I also got a 3 year warranty over Apple's 1 year. Little known fact is you can even buy the Dell monitors with the 5 year warranty, its just a few dollars more for every additional year of warranty on the units.
That said, it wasn't the only deal that sold me. I took the savings, bought $8 in appliance paint, and spent my savings on another Mac (the mini) with a new wireless keyboard and mouse on top. One weekend project and I now have a monitor that looks as good as the Apple computer.
The cat is from a Nikon Digital SLR, if you can imagine the raw image was more than 4 of those monitors put together to represent the actual picture without being resized.
Jan J.