Yes LCDs have sharper images precisely because they have well-defined regions for each pixel (actually, for each sub-pixel), while for CRTs, the dots are actually smeared in a Gaussian distribution (bell curve) so everything is naturally soft. I think this may be a reason why people think that LCDs tend to have a sharp, glaring image, while CRTs have softer, more pleasant images. LCDs do have a sharpness setting though, so you can adjust it downwards.
For LCDs, unfortunately, no ghosting and good colors are opposite requirements -- the panels with better color quality (i.e. IPS and MVA) tend to be slower, while the quicker one (TN) tend to have worse color quality (not to mention viewing angles). So you may have to compromise on that. I'm not sure I know what you mean by good colors though (nor reviewers for that matter) since colors have always been fine for me. Color settings can also be toggled around with LCDs.
Resolution is a hard topic for LCDs. They are not like CRTs, where better resolution means better quality. Rather, LCDs have a fixed ("native") resolution, which is the same as their maximum resolution, and the image quality suffers somewhat at any other resolution. At any rate, you're going to be looking at a bigger dot pitch than what you're used to for CRTs. But again. CRTs needed a finer and finer resolution to reduce the effects of blurring. LCDs don't blur, so the resolution may be a moot point.
No dead pixels will almost always mean going to a brick and mortar store and seeing the one you will be buying (i.e. taking it out of the box) there and testing it out. Realistically, your chances of getting a dead pixel or more is around 30%. Buying a monitor from a brick and mortar means you have a bigger chance of being able to exchanging it than being it online. Again, it also gives you a chance to see if the LCD is good enough for you.
Yes, LCDs are an emerging technology. However, remember that reviewers are more or less paid (indirectly) to put cons in reviews. Think of it this way: how much would you trust a reviewer who says every product he reviews is perfect? They know that they have to make room for criticisms, or their reputation is gonna sink (people will think they're too easy to please and hence not trust them). Furthermore, reviewers review the newest, most advanced products on the market, not the "middleware" that the rest of us gets. So combine the two, and you have a situation where no matter what comes out, it looks like there's still problems, even with the best of the best. A case in point, Tom's Hardware reviewed the Dell 2405 recently, and found that it performed "respectably" in terms of color quality (or something like that, don't have time to look up the article right now). Yet the actual color tracking data they give shows that it performed very well -- below the threshold that humans are supposed to be able to notice, by their own definitions. It's one of a few monitors to be able to do so. Does this mean it gets a good rating? No, it's just a ho-hum "respectable" for color. So again, the best advice I can give is to test it out yourself by going into a store and looking at monitors.
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