external monitors

[ian12345]

I am ordering 2 external monitors to use with T43p in mini dock. I will plug one into the DVI and 1 into the analog. I think max resolution is 1280 by 1024. I am thinking 19 inch. Do you recomend regular screen format or widescreen monitors?

[pianowizard]

Your T43p can drive both kinds of monitors. For bigger monitors with higher resolutions, widescreen is better than regular screens because you can view two documents or programs or pages side by side. If it's a 23" - 27" widescreen with 1920x1200 pixels (WUXGA), you can even view four windows simultaneously, one in each quadrant. I do that all the time and it's great, e.g. one windows for Yahoo Mail, one for my institution's webmail, one for eBay, and one for a MS Word document.

But if you are only considering widescreen or regular 19", then I think the latter is better, for the following reasons:

1) The resolution of a 19" widescreen is only 1440x900 (WXGA+), and IMO that's not enough horizontal pixels for viewing two windows side by side comfortably, i.e. you'd most likely end up maximizing all windows and viewing one at a time, just like on a regular 19" screen.

2) A regular 19" screen has SXGA resolution (1280x1024) and actually has more pixels (i.e. working area) than a widescreen 19", 1,310,720 vs. 1,296,000.

3) The last time I checked, regular 19" monitors were slightly cheaper than widescreen ones.

4) I think regular 19" monitors take up slightly less desktop space.

If you want to view two windows side by side, pay a little more and get a 20" widescreen monitor, which has 1680x1050 resolution.