For Christmas, I'm giving my brother a set of parts to build his first computer. I've already got everything in order except for the monitor. This is the first time I've priced out a computer since Display Port has come out and I'm not quite sure what its advantages are. I'm hoping to get him a monitor close to 22". The two examples I found are 21.5". The motherboard video outputs support DVI, HDMI, and DP. He will, of course, be installing Linux on this computer.

The best price on a monitor I can find with DP is this HP Elite L2201x for $130.

The best price on a monitor I can find with HDMI/DVI is the Dell ST2220L Glossy Black for $140.

From what I know right now, I'm leaning towards the Dell because it has more video inputs. It would give him a lot more freedom as far as the monitor is concerned. However, as I stated before, I don't know the advantages of DP.

Any thoughts on what I have selected? Any recommendations?

HDMI was invented by the media companies to support HDTV with the ability to enable a copy protection scheme. They did this without the VESA consortium, which usually creates the standards. So the VESA consortium came up with their own standard, DisplayPort. DP has some features that are missing in HDMI, but having a HDMI port on the monitor has advantages, like the ability to hook up a Bluray player or a XBox360/PS3.

Here is a short comparison: http://en.community.dell.com/dell-bl.../19/46464.aspx