This monitor has begun to… sparkle.

Let me see if I can appropriately describe this issue. First of all, it’s a 20″ LCD, Viewsonic VP201b. It runs at 1600×1200. I’ve had it for a couple of years, and I liked the monitor enough that I ended up buying another for my other computer shortly after getting this one. That monitor has since been passed on after being replaced by a 24″ widescreen monitor. Anyway, this monitor remains. And now it’s sparkling.

Every so often (read: a few times a day, for no apparent reason), varying amounts of pixels on the screen will blink, or “sparkle”. Sometimes red, sometimes blue, sometimes green (but only one of the three at any given time, I believe). What’s weird is that they are not static sparkles on the monitor. It most often happens in images on the screen, or text, and when the images or text are moved, the sparklies move with them, retaining their sparkling positions on said image or text. It often occurs along the edges and dark spots on objects in images, and will turn white text yellowish.

And then just as quickly as it started, the sparkling will stop.

So is the monitor just dying? Should I just buy a new one before I try to turn it on one day and all I get is a face full of sparkle? Or is some other issue afoot?

I’m not saying it isn’t pretty, I’d just like to know what it’s doing.