Widescreen or normal monitor?

[matt]

I'm currently looking at a new monitor(s) to replace my elderly dual screen setup. I've got a 19" (1280*1024) and a 15" (1024*768) tft setup currently. I'm planning on getting a new 'main' monitor and moving the 19" over to the secondary. But I'm rather torn on what to buy. I'd always planned on getting a 20.1" (1600*1200) monitor and in the long run having two of them. However, now that you get get decent 24" (1920*1200) widescreens at the same price, I'm having a hard time deciding. Does anyone run a dual 24" monitor setup? Am I mad for considering that? Has anyone had experience with both 24" and 20.1" screens? Which is better?

I've got a fairly decent sized desk and I could fit two of either on, so that's not really a consideration. My gfx card will be able to cope with both screens fine as well.

[deanjo]

It's really hard to go back working on a 4:3 after working with 16:10 especially when you are a heavy multitasker or use any app that uses sidebars or side menus. That extra real estate comes in extremely handy.

[matt]

Currently I'm planning on using a magic eight ball for this one:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi

I just can't make up my mind!

[grigi]

I just recently got myself a 24" 1920x1200 monitor (16:10). I had a 20" TFT (1400x1050), and although they are nice, the build & image quality of the 24" is better,though. The 24" is also slightly taller than the 20".

Window-manager support for 2 monitors is better than for a single split monitor, but single application support is much better.

e.g. try editing in Openoffice 3.0, and set is up to do split pages! Wow, it really makes it easy to review a document, since you can scan (read through) 2 pages at a time. That is very neat.

One thing that bugged me though is that going to webpages, eek! they are designed for very tall & narrow sites, but FF3 can come to some savings there with the screen zoom options, so that is not too bad.

[deanjo]

One thing that bugged me though is that going to webpages, eek! they are designed for very tall & narrow sites, but FF3 can come to some savings there with the screen zoom options, so that is not too bad.

I hear ya on that, but the same effect can be seen on 4:3's as well. Going fullscreen here for example generates 1/3 of the screen being a grey background when running at higher resolutions.

[matt]

Didn't know that about the OOorg 3.0 split screen, but I use emacs and the like quite a bit, that does split screening well. I hadn't thought about that, but you should be able to line a fair few screens up. It's worth looking into a decent tiling WM I think.

I'm getting one of these:

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/5890983/-/Product.html

Cheap and cheerful I know, but I'm a speccy wearer so I can never tell the difference between monitors anyway. As long as there aren't any dead pixels I'll be happy. Thanks for the advice guys.