[Joshua]

To be honest when I use my MB on my external 17" Samsung LCD I'm not too happy.

Can't really put it into words but the resolution is not as sharp and crisp as I would have hoped. I'm using Apple's Analog dongle, so maybe the DVI would produce better quality, but I'm doubtful.

Only thing I dislike about the 'close lid' mode is that it requires your AC is plugged in, and syncing upon first boot is weird sometimes.

I disliked the quality of my external so much I went ahead and switched back to using it as a regular laptop. 13" is small but the screen is gorgeous so to me it's worth it.

Bottom line from my experience is that you'll be hard pressed to replicate an exact image quality on an external. But I'm still going to try to try it out on different LCD's, but I've always been happy with Samsung's displays.