I see most manufacturers are now making so-called wide screen LCD
monitors in addition to the regular ones.
I am in the market for a new monitor, and I wonder which kind I should
get.
I have the impression that wide screen is more useful for video. Is
that so?
Yes, but only if your video is in wide-screen format.
Modern commercial DVD or TV might be, but quite a lot of
computer-targeted video was developed for the more common
aspect ratios, closer to 4:3 than to widescreen or nearer
widescreen.
If I display a text document page on a wide screen LCD, do I get what
I would normally get on a regular LCD but with unused areas maybe on
both sides?
Yes, no and maybe.
If the document word-wraps, it fills whole width of screen
still. If it doesn't, you can use a larger font and it will
be wider, else yes it will have unusued areas.
You need to go to a store and fiddle with some systems
hooked up to wide and non-wide screens to see what looks
best to you. In general, widescreens are more often cited
as good for spreadsheets, something I have to agree with if
you have several columns and don't want to put your nose to
screen to read the necessarily tiny font (to keep it all
on-screen at any moment).
Or is the text document page blown up to cover the full
screen width at the expense of height (i.e. showing fewer text lines)?
That doesn't strike me as too good.
yes, "IF" you choose to have it larger font, you will see
fewer vertical lines of text.
In general, given any particular inch measurement of the
screen, the higher the aspect ratio (more wide-screen it
is), the lower the actual screen area (simple mathematics)
and thus the fewer vertical pixels.
So the choice is pretty simple really, if you value using
data or movies that already are in a wide-screen
complimentary "shape", preserved as such, get a wide screen
monitor. For typical office work, email or websurfing with
_one_ window in focus (or maximized) at a time, the more
traditional 4:3 or 5:4 for 19", may be better. If you
commonly put two windows tiled vertically on screen, that
would be better with widescreen monitors.
It can depend on the budget too, given a large enough
monitor, even when the data/movie/etc on screen is a
different *shape*, it's still presented large enough to use
at a comfortable distance. To put it another way, I
wouldn't buy a 19" 1440x900 monitor because I don't find 900
vertical pixels to be enough, since most apps have toolbars
at the top, a title window, etc. Regarding games, it
depends a lot on what you play if anything, more modern and
future games are more likely to support wider screens but
currently it's hit-or-miss, you have to research it to know
about particular titles.