LCD era, and not really liking it yet

I finally bought a Viewsonic LCD monitor today. It was quite a let down in terms of color. I usually use dark color theme on my desktop and since the monitor seems to be brighter than CRT it makes all the color seems fading. But when I play games the colors does not seems to be too shabby.

However, when I looks at the screen I felt my eyes were straining to watch the screen for some reason... I hope it just because of the new position of the monitor and not the monitor itself... I simply can't afford to buy a new one...