The question is pretty much moot now what with the nearly total disappearance of CRT's from the line up.
Indeed the best photo editing monitors are no longer being made (high end Sony aperture grills and there ilk)
Roy C wrote in post #4225182
... I have found plenty of post where people say that LCD's are still not up to a good Quality CRT's for image editing (apart from the very top of the range LCD's costing several thousand $)
This is still true IMHO, but...
At this point, the question is really what good LCD or what good used CRT. (for the faithfull only, I would not advise the used CRT route as it is stop gap) if cost is an issue, to get top of line CRT-ish performance in an LCD you are correct it will cost a lot more than anything "Dell" has to offer.
FYI Calibration will not make a bad LCD a good one, so get a good one and calibrate it.