What do you mean with "far more pleasant"? If it is about eye strain, your old CRT was probably either bad or you had it at a very low refresh rate. But a bad modern flat panel will have a lot of its own issues too (e.g. a very cheap Fujitsu monitor i bought some time ago had colors so washed up and awful, it was straining just to look at a static image on it).

If it is something else... i'm not sure what that would be. Can you elaborate?