CRT is best for gaming.

1 thing a TFT is good for is the that it can resize the screen to completely fit the monitor so u never get a black line or too much to over fill the screen.
 
CRT does give a much nicer, clearer and sharper picture.

Not to mention that the TFTs had a painfully slow refresh time, so the images would appear to blur or just disappear when moving quickly across the screen (and this may still be the case with low-end units). Also, while many TFTs do resize for the resolution that's being displayed, there are others that don't at all and simply make a smaller viewing area dead-center on the screen.

Yeah I traded my TFT in for a CRT. You can get a good 21" for the price of a cheap 17"TFT

Well, one of them is a Belinea 101545, supposedly very good image quality and decent for gaming too. The other is a Liteon 150F, not bad as well, it has speakers too. Both are analog, but there is no difference nowadays between DVI and analog inputs. Contrast for both is 350:1, and response time around 40ms.
 
Is it true that a 15" TFT has the same viewable area as a 17" CRT? That is around 38cm, I think...

Yes, 15" TFT gives you 15" of viewable area.
17" monitors can give as low as 15" of viewable area.
 
If you are going to go TFT try and make sure you have a true digital to digital connection (DVI at both ends) and pick up the TFT with the fastest response rate, apparently a couple of months ago the Philips unit offered the best response rates and made an excellent gamers panel.
Don't compare refresh rates of a CRT to that of a TFT, they cannot be compared.
TFT's don't work in the same way, so a Max. Refresh of 60Hz shouldn't put you off.

I made up my mind fellas!!! Im gonna buy an HP L1520!!! It supposedly kicks *** (according to Tomshardware!). U can see it here:
 
http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020322/lcd-06.html
 
And the conclusions here:
 
http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020322/lcd-09.html
 
It has a 35ms reaction time, 350:1 contrast, 250cd/m2 brightness, image autoresizing, anti-glare coating, DVI and Analog inputs,etc...
Im dying to ditch my 17" monster, and run this puppy.
 
Tom tested it with Quake3 and it is one of the best TFTs in the market that run FPS games and such with no afterglow or tearing!!!
Pray for me, and Ill post later on today the first practical experiences.
 
Oh, forgot the price: €450

Hey id love a decent TFT, the only problem that i see with them is they only look good in 1 resolution, the others are just resized or blown up

*Dribble*

Well I said I will post the practical experiences: IT KICKS ***! It runs at 1024x768x32 at 60-75Hz, optimal refresh is at 60Hz though, it cannot be compared to 60Hz on CRTs. Gaming is excellent, I cannot notice ANY tearing,delay or slow refresh of the screen. I am playing CS without any major impediments, alas it took me 3 days to get used to it for some reason
 
I installed XP, and I have to add that Cleartype looks GOOOOOD on TFT screens, better than KDE 3.0 with antialiased fonts
 
As a pleasant surprise I noticed that the new Detonators, 28.32 are extremly stable, I am having NO lockups or infinite loops. I did not install any VIA drivers, I only have the XP critical updates from Windows Update.
 
There u go...