Dell 24"wide or 20" flat panel

OK guys, I have a question. I would like to get the Dell 24" wide flat panel because it's on sale til wednesday. And my question is for all you that have/had widescreens: what are the pros and cons of having a widescreen against a non-wide? (ie. for gaming & basic use & comfortabiliy)

/.teh

#375698

Multitasking for Word Documents, PDFs, and other primary sources. Other than that, it's more widget space for Windows and more useable space on Mac.

#375706

also there are ways of getting round that problem on games as most games come with a widescreen option built in

#375708

I don't think you should be thinking twice about buying the 24 in. dell lcd. Wide-screen is the future of desktop computers. Hurry! buy it now!

#375720

Seriously though, this is a butt load of money I am shelling out for it. lol. So gaming is great for it?

#375732

I just got a 19" widescreen (1440x900) and it made me wonder why I didnt get one a LONG time ago. Widescreen pwns hands-down. I will never have a normal monitor again :P

#375733

I personally own a 20" Dell Ultrasharp Widescreen (and have owned it since Christmas) and here are the pros and cons:

Pros:

Widescreen is DEFINATELY better for viewing documents, displaying things on desktop, compairing 2 documents side by side ect. The extra space gained is a huge improvement, and I hear that with a 24" widescreen you can view 2 full word documents side by side without needing to scroll.

Cons:

I won't lie, widescreen monitors were not made for gaming (well, at least not yet anyway). A little over half the newer games support wide screen resolutions, 35% of the ones that don't can be EASILY hacked to display in a widescreen resolution anyway, while the other 15% (mostly older games) will refuse to run on a widescreen resolution.

Even if the game does not run on a wide screen, however, you can set it to the closest fullscreen setting available, and usually (especially in FPS games) You won't notice any diffrence at all.

If you play a lot of games, and are concerned about this, I HIGHLY suggest you check out widescreengamingforums.com/. This website contains a complete list of games that support widescreen monitors, either via a hack (available in the forums) or that have it natively.

All in all, I would say go for it. It's a good investment, I love my 20" widescreen, and personally wouldn't go back to a fullscreen monitor.

iTim

#375752

hmmm.. @iTim

you mean majority of the games aren't made for wide screen gaming... yet. Graphics cards are not yet powerful enough to pump out 60fps and more for a resolution of 1920x1200. but trust me, it's worth it.

#375763

@iTim: Dood. Thank you for that explanation and that site to go to. :) And I think I'm not ready for one just yet. Just going to go for the 20" for now.

#375767

May be a bit late, but we play hl2, ut, doom3, battlefield2 and quake on my new24" dell flat screen

we love it

#376099

If you can't really decide, at all, just buy both and mail the one that is least liked by you to me.

#376101

hahahaha, Blaze.

Well I decided to not go with the widescreen and instead build a better PC. It's time to upgrade :D

Getting:

AMD Athlon 62 X2 4800 (switching from Intel to try something new)

Asus A8N-SLI NF4

eVGA GeForce 7900 GTX EGS 512MB PCI-E (1 for now)

2GB Ram

#376440

That's good for a Dell. Really good.

Have never tried an AMD Processor, but I think I've got an AMD Processor in our unassembled, old computer.

#376468