I have used CRT monitors for many years, but 1.5 years ago I bought myself a first laptop. My opinion is simple: I don't want to go back to the CRT ever again. I have found that LCD strains my eyes much less, and generally causes me to be significantly less tired after sitting at the computer for many hours. I simply could not use the CRT if the refresh rate was set to lower than 70 Hz, but I was still noticing the flickering up to 80 Hz. LCDs have 60 Hz refresh rate, but it does not bother me. I also like that LCDs display one pixel per one dot (when using "native" resolution). On the CRT pixels are "smeared" over color dots, and this makes everything blurry and with color shadows (which I was always noticing). The geometry of LCD is much better than on CRT (i.e. it is flat and straight lines are straight). I usuallly keep brightness / contrast cranked up to the maximum, because I like to see everything well. I knew a guy who was very sensitive to lighting conditions and who also preferred LCDs over CRTs. The guy has dismantled all fluorescent lights in the vicinity of his desk, and brought his own LCD monitor to work.
Please note that my laptop has a rather good 16' screen (same size as 17' CRT), which is viewable from wide angle and does not suffer from the shimmering effect that many LCD screens have. It is a matte screen that does not reflect everything like those that are currently popular (a fad, in my opinion). It does have drawbacks, though. One is that colors are generally a bit distorted and change slightly with viewing angle or when window is scrolled. The other is that non-native resolutions produce less than ideal image, which affects some games.