Poll: How many use widescreen vs normal monitors?

[MSIC]

Am curious regarding my own and many others recent experience of widescreen gaming.
Of course there is the excellent widescreen gaming forum, but i am on a mission to try to drag widescreen into the populous, rather than being a minority / elitist thing.

How many people who visit this forum have widescreen monitors?

For the purpose of the poll, i will include 4:3 (1024 x 768, 1600 x 1200 etc) and 5:4 (1280 x 1024) together, as non-widescreen.
Also, for clarification, am talking about your primary home monitor, not a work one (unless you only have a work one!). This may include laptops, if that is your primary interface.

I also realise that people who visit here may not be truely reflective of the wider PC user population, but it's a start.

PS This is my first attempt at doing a poll, so don't know what i am doing!

[malfunction]

Sony 23" Widescreen. Nice screen but shame about the cooling fan. I have a near silent PC so the loudest thing in the room other than me typing is the fan in the monitor... Anyone know how common it is to have some kind of active cooling on a larger LCD?

[Sumanji]

The problem I find with wide-screen displays (including TV's) is that I always feel like there isn't enough "height". They just seem a bit squashed, and I'd need to have a pretty huge display to get over this effect.

WS is definitely the future though

Suman

[AndyO]

Think I can finally vote in the Widescreen camp...a tad premature as it hasn't turned up yet!

[kempez]

Yep Dell 2405FPW and its excellent.

[unreal]

2005FPW here, never going back to 4:3, using college comps now seem so weird and restricted ;_;

[shaithis]

IMO, Widescreen gaming is great.....especially in MMORPGs and FPSes....the panoramic view is brilliant

There are downsides of course.....games that still don't support widescreen can be a bitch to get looking right, the larger screens are maybe a little too large and if you do go with a large screen you end up spending a lot on both the screen and a very high-end PC to drive the resolutions it needs.

All said, I couldn't go back

[Kaine (AoD)]

26" Dell Widescreen LCD monitor, Widescreeeeeeeeeeeen ftw!!!

Also agree'd on the "couldnt go back" part

[MSIC]

Thanks for the votes so far, am interested to see if i can get a large enough number to have some meaning (over 50? over 100?).

[smelly]

Dell 2005 20" wide screen, fantastic monitor - a little bleed but nothing to be afraid about.

[noTHINGface]

Still think you're a bit early doors for mainstream WS gaming - but it is always exciting when you buy something new.

[kasavien]

Quick question is it worth getting a 19" widescreen monitor, or is there no benefit of having a widescreen monitor unless it is 20" plus?

Thanks

Andy

[dangel]

The problem I have with widescreen is that you need a much larger screen to make it work. IMHO the widescreen version of mine (2005) isn't tall enough and so i preferred (and bought the 2001 4:3). That leaves you wanting the expensive 24", which then means you need a lot more graphics power to fill that huge screen at good framerates (at native res). 1600x1200 is more than enough to tax my pc so i can't see me upgrading mine until maybe a year or so when graphics power doubles or triples. But each to his own, and i mean no disrespect to those who like widescreen (hey, i got a widescreen tv).

[Smokey21]

Normal 19" CRT here. A gamers monitor.

[MSIC]

That is an interesting point, and certainly my experience of going from a 17" CRT (at 1280 x 960) to 20" widescreen (at 1680 x 1050) is that my system no longer feels quite so capable. Yes, next year, graphics, memory and processors will be faster and be able to support the more pixels a widescreen monitor has, better than now (at least for a given price).
That said, i think (and prove me wrong here) that an investment in a monitor is perhaps more significant that investment in internal components, and certainly not something i am willing to do every year. My thought is that if people are considering purchasing a monitor over the next 12 months, to last them say, 5 years (?), they really should consider widescreen as an option. And pretty soon even bog-standard computers will be able to drive them quite well. (In fact, as an example, i built a 6150-based A64 machine, onboard VGA, and it plays UT 2003 very smoothly at 1680 x 1050 with almost all options to max - it's an old game, but I was very surprised still).

As for the 19" question, the resolutions tend to be 1440 x 900 or similar, but I saw one at overclockers for not much over £180!! (has to be a bargain at that price!).

[AndyO]

Still think you're a bit early doors for mainstream WS gaming - but it is always exciting when you buy something new.

Like waiting for your favourite boozer to open...worth savouring every minute