TUAW ran a story entitled “Forget the faster Mac, get a bigger monitor.” The rationale is most Macs are plenty fast for their users unless you’re a film/video or graphics person. Instead, take your dough and buy a big monitor with lots of screen real estate.

I agree, however, it depends what you’re intending to upgrade from/to. I’ve found my 20″ Dell LCD ($400) to be more than adequate at 1600×1050. Instead of dropping twice that on a 23 or 24 inch display, think about spending $150 to increase your system’s RAM to 1 GB.

My trusty old 800 MHz PowerBook G4 runs like a champ since I bumped from 512 MB to 1 GB a few days ago. Running DEVONthink, Safari, Mail, iCal, Address Book, Excel, BBEdit, and iTunes concurrently is a breeze. Finder windows update faster as well, making a right-click on Documents less torturous.

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