Shapes and Sizes

LCD monitors come in numerous shapes and sizes. Height-to-width ratio of 3:4 is dominating these days, but those with 9:16 ratios are gaining fast. These wider displays make the best use of the screen in case you want to watch DVD on your computer or would like to display two pages at a time while word-processing. Business folks like them as they can see more columns of their spreadsheets on these wider displays.
The size of the monitor is specified in terms of the diagonal measure of the display area. 15” diagonal displays were popular until recently, then 17” ones became cost-effective, and now 19” monitors are selling rapidly. Their popularity is, generally, a measure of the cost: the costs are coming down fast due to the increasing efficiency of the manufacturing process, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Here is my advice on which one to buy: spend around $300 on a monitor. A year back that bought you a 15” size; a year from now it will buy you a 21” one.The maximum resolution of the display increases with diagonal size. Most 19” displays (with a 3:4 height-to-width ratio) now support a resolution of 1,280x1,024. Try to find a monitor having a resolution at least that much.