19" widescreen or "normal"?

[John]

My existing monitor is on its last legs and I'm looking at replacing it with
a 19" LCD but.....

I don't play games and I don't watch DVD movies on my PC so is there any
advantage or benefit to spending a bit extra and getting a 19" widescreen
monitor or am I just as well sticking to the "traditional" 19" 4:3 type
monitors?

Cheers,

John.

 

[Mark]

My existing monitor is on its last legs and I'm looking at replacing it with
a 19" LCD but.....

I don't play games and I don't watch DVD movies on my PC so is there any
advantage or benefit to spending a bit extra and getting a 19" widescreen
monitor or am I just as well sticking to the "traditional" 19" 4:3 type
monitors?

Cheers,

John.

19" widescreen will be quite a bit smaller in terms of overall screen
space, but it is wider, which can work well for some applications, eg,
Microsoft Word with the navigation panel activated, or many programming
interfaces.

 

[Mike Ruskai]

My existing monitor is on its last legs and I'm looking at replacing it with
a 19" LCD but.....

I don't play games and I don't watch DVD movies on my PC so is there any
advantage or benefit to spending a bit extra and getting a 19" widescreen
monitor or am I just as well sticking to the "traditional" 19" 4:3 type
monitors?

The two are not comparable.

For some maddening reason, widescreen displays continued the bizarre
trend of marketing display sizes based on a diagonal measurement.

So, a 19" 4:3 display is not the same size as a 19" 16:10 display.

What you want is either a 19" 4:3 display (which, at 1280x1024, will
actually be a 5:4 display), or a 22/23" 16:10 display.

They'll have the same screen height and vertical resolution, but the
widescreen display will have more horizontal pixels.

That means more screen real estate, which is the only reason you would
want a widescreen monitor, given what you don't do with your computer.