Thinking of upgrading monitors.

I am using a vizio va26l at the moment, and don't have many gripes with it. It's a 720p set, works well with my cable, games well with the computer, and the lower resolution actually lets me read some things. It's often on and acting as the speakers for my computer while I stream in some internet radio.

I'm thinking of moving up into the 37-42" range sometime not horribly down the road.Maybe I'll figure out a wall mount and stick the old 26" directly above my (proposed new) tv/monitor and do the dual thing.

I'm looking for something good with text(school, lots and lots and lots of programming homework), gaming, decent audio (should I just bite the bullet and pick up a cheep 5.1 speaker system? I use a headset instead of speakers most of the time.), don't care about side views so much as I live alone and I'm either directly in front of it or completely out of sight when using it.

Now for the 1080vs 720 portion of the show, I like the lower resolutions for the increased item size on screen (that text I mentioned earlier) and being able to get by with an older cheaper video card for gaming. 1080 is very nice, but do I really want to go down that path and most likely wind up shelling out $$$ for a better video card to push it? no bluray, 360 or ps3 either. I never got into the movie craze, and don't wanna buy games for more than one platform.

Thanks if anyone has a clue. This is all very very preliminary.

I would recommend a Panasonic TH-42PH11UK professional monitor 1024 x 768p these are excellent monitors. Definitely one of the very best for what you are looking for..