Widescreen vs. normal monitor

There is tendency for wide screens (with ratio of 16:10 or 16:9) instead of normal (classic ratio of 5:4). The numbers below maybe are not relevant (as you don't find 5:4 display in the stores, and 19'' is a small screen compared to 22'' or 24'' which are popular today), but their purpose is to show calculations for effective display area:

Screen	width, mm	height, mm	ratio	ratio text	area, sq. mm	width, pixels	height, pixels	area, pixels	Diagonal, mm	Diagonal, inches
19" widescreen	410	256	1.60	16:10	104,960	1440	900	1,296,000	483.36	19.03
17'' normal	339	271	1.25	5:4	91,869	1280	1024	1,310,720	434.01	17.09

Now you can see the marketing of the display makers: they sell you a 19'' wide screen and you think it's bigger then your old 17'' 5:4 screen, but they are fooling you!

The area of a 19'' wide screen monitor is not that much bigger then the area of a 17'' normal screen monitor!