Recently purchased the Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW for about $300 shipped. It's a 22" and I love it, great monitor for the price. It's a great monitor for the price, only has RGB and VGA input tho, so it will only work for a monitor.
Great monitor tho, I looked at both the Dell and Viewsonic, and if I were to choose from those two, I'd go with the Dell, read a lot of good things about it.
I would love to have gotten an Apple monitor as well, but like you said just can't afford them. It's too bad, I definitely would like to get one for my next monitor, saw the 30" in the Apple Store, it's just brilliant.
Good luck.