I purchased a new 22" Samsung 226BW monitor based on a strong recommendation by PC Authority.  The other day I noticed a bit of discolouration around fringes of a drawing I was working on.  The effect disappeared and I'm not sure what the cause was - it possibly wasn't an issue with the monitor - but before before it corrected itself I dug though the monitor settings and found a "Sharpening" option.

By default the setting is at 60%. Increasing the value creates ghastly halos around objects as you would expect.  Setting the sharpening to 0 turns the picture into a blur so strong you can no longer read text.

As someone who is quite anal about picture quality, the existence of the sharpening setting on my monitor is bugging me to no end.  Why does a digital image, transmitted over digital cabling to a digital monitor need a sharpening setting that will only serve to deteriorate what would otherwise be a pixel-perfect image?  More so, when would you ever want to blur your video image!?  This setting makes me think there is something wrong with the monitor for it to need it.