It's not huge, but it's probably noticeable at a high enough resolution.
I'd recommend ViewSonic or NEC -- they both make excellent CRT monitors. I use Viewsonic at home, and my office is all NECs, and they're both pretty good (I give slight preference to Viewsonic because they tend to be a bit cheaper). I haven't used a Samsung monitor in a *while* (other than for maybe 5 minutes at a time in a computer lab somewhere), so I can't comment there.