gdgt

I had a ~80% failure/defect rate on about four dozen over the course of three years. Mostly panel (mottling backlight, dead panel, premature backlight failure, etc) and PSU issues, the remaining ones had some odd issues - such as not powering on properly in colder temperatures. However, very, very few dead pixels.

Since I added to the 23-inch stash from '06 to when they were discontinued, I have noticed that the panels vary greatly from batch to batch - a lot of Apple devotees mention that these come pre-calibrated and I have to say from what I've seen it's horsecrud, and that many variations were enough to make calibration-to-equivalence impossible (since the 23-inchers were only used in dual, quad, 23-30-23 and 23-30-30-23 configs). In this case what I had to do was to basically play 'musical monitors' and pair/quad off those on which the panels seemed most similar in terms of their general capbility.

Personally, given my experience with Apple monitors (and really, most stuff from Apple) I'd say buy one in warranty. But *some* of my monitors were fault-less. A relatively tiny percentage, but it's not impossible.