>>720180358
and by everybody you mean the average female who didn't use them for video games. it was very obvious in those days that flat panels had much lower visual quality, they're nothing like modern ones. also in those days, "flat screen" was used to market certain types of CRTs that had a flat, rather than curved, screen surface, so the LCDs were called flat "panels" referring to its form factor rather than the screen itself, while "LCD" was known at the time for primitive displays like Game & Watch so they didn't use that to market the monitors.
size and weight aside, LCDs didn't really become more popular for power gamers until widescreen formats became widely available, which at the time was a means of cheating/exploiting engines that simply added more FOV if you had a widescreen monitor. since widescreen CRTs never made it to a mass market, upgrading to a widescreen flat panel became a quasi-necessity for competitive gaming.
