Widescreen Monitors' Increasing Appeal

Don't be surprised if the next monitor you get from your IT department is larger than your current one, particularly as more and more business applications are adapted to take advantage of widescreen monitors.

"We're starting to see more business applications being formatted for a wide screen," said Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at iSuppli Corp. in El Segundo, Calif. The market research firm predicts that worldwide shipments of wide-format LCD monitors will nearly quadruple from 9.1 million units in 2006 to 35.8 million units this year.

And businesses that are buying widescreen monitors may tend to pick 20-in. or larger models instead of 19-in. ones because the bigger size is a slightly better fit for some applications, according to Alexander. She said that some documents will default to a two-page spread when displayed on a widescreen monitor. But in a 19-in. model, that page may be cut off slightly, Alexander said.

The difference between how standard and widescreen monitors use the available display space also is helping to move business users to larger monitors. For instance, the screen on a standard 19-in. monitor is 14.8 in. wide and 11.9 in. high, giving it a total area of 176.1 in.

By comparison, a 19-in. widescreen model, measuring 16.1 in. by 10 in., has a screen area of 161 in. But a 20-in. widescreen monitor at 17.1 in. by 10.7 in., has an area of 183 in. And if you really want to go big, there are 24-in. widescreens that measure in at 20.4 in. by 12.8 in. -- giving them a 261.1-in. display area.

Currently, widescreen monitors have just a fraction of the business market, with the majority of users still on standard-size screens. ISuppli expects widescreen models to dominate the market in the years ahead, surpassing traditional displays in both revenue and unit shipments by 2009. But Alexander said she doesn't think standard-size monitors will disappear, because business users may want the additional screen height they provide for certain types of uses.

Some users may move directly to 22-in. screens because of aggressive pricing by vendors of those models, Alexander said. But, she added, it's likely that none of the different sizes will emerge as a desktop standard.

Daniel Wolfgang, a Web designer who lives in Bristol, Conn., uses a 20-in. widescreen monitor at work. The benefits of the larger monitor were so apparent that he recently purchased a 24-in. widescreen model for his home office. "The extra screen real estate is nice," said Wolfgang, who wrote about his upgrade from a traditional 19-in. CRT monitor on his blog last week.

Although big may be better when it comes to monitors, Wolfgang said a 24-in. display is as large as he's willing to go. "I definitely would not want to go to 27 inches or 30 inches -- it's too big," he said. "Given the distance I am from the screen, I can't see being comfortable with that at all."