Struggling between widescreen or 4:3 monitor

[stevek11290]

NEED EDUCATED HELP !!!

Can't make a decision between buying a 4:3 or widescreen LCD monitor. I don't do gaming or DVD movies on the computer, just photoshop, internet and business related stuff.

Is widescreen the way of the future more so than the 4:3 for the LCD's? Seems that the widescreen monitors are generally priced better than the 4:3's.

I am currently looking at the Samsung 20.1" 204B for the 4:3 and the Acer 2051W for the 20" widescreen. Samsung is $356 and the Acer is $310. Both get very high marks. The money difference is not the issue, just the shape.

[thefultonhow]

I haave a 20" 4:3 and have seen 20" widescreens in action. I like the 4:3 better -- the widescreen just seems like a 17" with pieces added on to each side.

[freakitchen]

....And I actually prefer the widescreen aspect! I think this proves that it's very much a personal preference. I'd tend to warn gamers off the widescreen aspect; you still can't be certain of native support in all new titles.

Saying that, I really appreciate the extra lateral space a widescreen gives, although of course that space is lost vertically. See if you can see the two aspect ratios in action - perhaps at a retail store, before you buy.

FK

[stevek11290]

Just what I was afraid of, 1 for and 1 against. LOL I did look at CompUSA this past weekend while I was in Chicago but they were connected to a single output that was running a standard video and they were not set to the "native resolution" so I could really not tell the difference. Widescreen was stretched compared to the 4:3 and it was hard to really compare.

I did do some measuring and the viewing height of the 20 widescreen was the same height of my current 19" CRT, with the width more obviously. No computer store in this area has 20" widescreens and both Best Buy and Circuit City run the same "canned" video like I was seeing at CompUSA.

Biggest problem was that I really liked some aspects of both. You are very correct that it is a personal preference. I was hoping for some feedback that possibly there were some significant drawbacks for the widescreen other than less height but so far haven't heard any.

[thefultonhow]

I think that a 23" or 24" widescreen would make sense, because their resolution is 1920x1200 and you can easily fit two windows side-by-side on them. On a 20" widescreen, though, there's really no benefit to the extra width. Keep in mind that they are only 80 pixels wider than 4:3 20" displays -- 1680x1050 vs. 1600x1200.

[freakitchen]

thefultonhow has a good point about the relative size between the two. My 19" widescreen appears significantly different to my older 17" LCD, but perhaps this difference is reduced in larger sizes.

I'm happy to sacrifice the reduced height and thus put up with the (slightly) increased scrolling for the much-improved video viewing experience. However, if this isn't what you're going to be using the screen for, then I'd be tempted to concede this fight

FK

[ammo]

It all depends what you want it for. To me gaming is much better on a standard screen and video\DVD is better with a widescreen. Since you want to do photoshop widescreen would probably be the better choice

[stevek11290]

Thanks for all of the help and thoughts.

Decided on getting the 20" widescreen. Will try it for awhile and if I don't like it, well, there's always Ebay I guess.

[Stretchman]

Best of luck stevek, I hope you enjoy it. This thread was interesting to me b/c I was an early widescreen adopter - so early, in fact, that I coudln't even wait for PC makers to come out with them. So, i've been using a widescreen apple cinema display hooked up to my pc for the past several years.

I've definitely enjoyed the experience, but am actually looking to simplify my setup somewhat by replacing it with a standard 4:3 19" or 20" lcd monitor. Gaming was pretty fun on it - but there are issues, not only with the tweaking you have do,but particularly with the still relatively limited amount of game support. Glad you were able to make a decision - let us know how it turns out!

[stevek11290]

Little bit of a kink in the decision. Went to the list of resolutions that my ATI 9800 Radeon card supported and it went to 1600 x 1200 and did not list any of the widescreen resolutions (1680 x 1050). Updated to the latest driver and it put some of the lower resolutions in there but still stops at 1600 x 1200.

Need to do a bit more investigation to see if this is a real problem or if I am just worrying about nothing. May end up with a 4:3 after all to match up with the video card.

RATTTTTTTS !!!

[glc]

That res should become enabled when you connect the monitor - it is not going to show resolutions available that the current monitor can't handle.

[stevek11290]

Originally Posted by glc That res should become enabled when you connect the monitor - it is not going to show resolutions available that the current monitor can't handle.

Appreciate the feedback. Went ahead and ordered the 20"widescreen monitor, so I hope the above is the case .

Thanks again

[stevek11290]

Got the new widescreen tonight and so far pretty nice. The correct resolution is enabled just like glc said it would. Thanks for that.

Need to increase all of the text sizes somewhat though as these old, tired eyes need for text, etc., to be a little bit bigger than the 1680 x 1050 default. Have a question about the FireFox text size that I posted in the browser portion of this forum. Hope I can get that part fixed OK and need to change the appearance sizes of the toolbars, etc., but right now just trying to get used to the widescreen.

Thanks for all of the information in the above posts.