Bought a new monitor today and love it. I want to know if leaving

[napi21]

an ;cd monitor on 24/7 shortens it's life.

My old one was only 1 1/2 years old, and I think that's a very short life! I have broadband and stream radio all the time. At night, I shut everything down except the radio stream and the only display is my desktop. I found that if I let the VISTA sleep mode operate, it also shuts off the sound and I don't want that.

The new one I bought has a 3 year warranty, but I'd still like it to last as long as possible!

BTW, it's a LD 23" W61 series gloss screen and the colors & definition is GREAT!!!!

If I just use a screen saver, will that make any difference? I've never had any burn in, but I'm still concerned that leaving it on all the time shortens it's life.

[pokerfan]

1. I often turn my monitor off if I need the system up all night

Found this blogger who received this response from Gateway:

The major determinant of an LCD monitor's lifetime is the CCFL (cold-cathode fluorescent lamp) backlight. The CCFL has a phosphor coating which very slowly degrades over time, reducing the strength of the backlight and hence reducing the overall brightness of the display. Most LCD panels have a backlight rated in the tens of thousands of hours of operation (specific rating depends on a variety of factors, including size of the display). When the user turns off the display, the phosphors in the backlight are given a "rest" while it's off, and hence the lifetime of the display could be slightly extended.

A better recommendation is to use the built in power savings functions in Windows XP and Vista. You can set the power settings control panel to put the monitor into standby after a predefined amount of non-PC usage (as low as 1 minute). This will cause the monitor to go to sleep after the timer expires. Another means of saving energy is to put the PC into standby (aka sleep) manually when it is not in use. This can be done from the Start menu on XP and Vista. By the way, all of our shipping monitors that are 24" in size or less consume 2W of power while in standby. In the off state, they consume 1W or less. These conform to Energy Star guidelines.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/97819