You can probably blame the demise of the 4:3 aspect ratio on the rise of HD brought on by Blu Ray and HD broadcasts albeit widescreen TVs have been around a while before that.

A lot of the generation of PC buyers now do little other than play games, watch films and videos of dogs howling along to the theme of Eastenders and they want it in HD (I don't know why)

I still have 4:3 aspect LCD monitors at work which are set at SVGA res (1024 x 768) so I can read the small text easily, on my how system I have one widescreen HD monitor running at 1280 x 720, it took a while to get used to but it is quite nice.

I still have 4:3 aspect LCD monitors at work which are set at SVGA res (1024 x 768) so I can read the small text easily, on my how system I have one widescreen HD monitor running at 1280 x 720

Good old 1280 � 1024 native on my monitor, would need a mahoosive widescreen to get the same Y dimension

Wikipedia says "A 4:3 ratio mimics human eyesight visual angle of 155°h x 120°v" but that is Wikipedia, feels about right to me though - I don't have widescreen eyes

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Wikipedia says "A 4:3 ratio mimics human eyesight visual angle of 155°h x 120°v" but that is Wikipedia, feels about right to me though - I don't have widescreen eyes

Nor me. How many websites take up the middle 50% and little else? How much vertical scrolling do you do? Lots more on a WS monitor.

I settled for a 16:10 ratio in the end. Still wasn't totally happy, but have gotten used to it. I would swap back to 4:3 in a second if I could get a 22"+ monitor at a reasonable price.

I'm not sure that eyesight visual angle is entirely relevant in this context. You do not just look at a fixed point on a screen so I can see how a widescreen that will support two open windows at a reasonable size and resolution could be extremely useful. I'm thinking of writing code in one windows whilst having documentation in the other. You don't look at both windows at once, but it's easier to flick from one to the other than having to use keyboard or mouse to do so.

I actually use a 1280 x 1024 monitor (the smallest resolution that I think is comfortable for such work) but I'm thinking of getting a 1920 x 1080 one for the reasons above. That extra 50% screen real estate would be really useful in some situations.

You do not just look at a fixed point on a screen

Right now I'm looking at the whole screen comfortably, if it was wider my eyes would have to scan left and right.

I agree the extra width can be handy for two tasks but you have to have a massive widescreen to get the same height as I have now (in mm)

if it was wider my eyes would have to scan left and right

But that's exactly what I want to do in the situation I describe. I want to look left while I'm editing the code, then look right when I want to look something up or cut and paste from the documentation. It's easier for me if I concentrate on one window at a time but don't have to use the keyboard or mouse to switch between them.

This is the way I work in real life when reading a book. I have two pages in front of me but only concentrate on one at a time; I might flick my eyes over to a diagram or table on the opposite page, then back to where I was reading. It's easier to do this than to have to turn the page to see the diagram then turn back to the text.

Personally i use a wide screen monitor as my primary, and an older 4:3 as a secondary. I find it just as easy to see a web page on both screens, wide screen is better for gaming websites, such as Battlelog for BF3 it fills the whole screen with stuff, like a friends bar on the right side and the server browser stuff on the left. Where as forums such as this only really require the 4:3 aspect ratio, so i think they both have a place in the world on modern computing.

On the topic of Windows 8, i had the RC from Microsoft technet thing, found it to be a vile looking waste of time for PC, if you have a Tablet wonderful, if you have some other touch screen device great, for a PC useless. I also note that they offer a win7 to win8 upgrade for £24.99, which shows the quality of the product, when a Vista to 7 upgrade cost £90-100 on release. Win8 will be the new VISTA, they will release win9 that will drop all the [censored] and get back to the 7 like interface.

a Vista to 7 upgrade cost £90-100 on release

Actually, it was £42 and that included a box and media. It wasn't even an upgrade but a full stand-alone version. If you buy Windows 8 that way it costs about the same. In both cases those are introductory prices.

Online updates of Windows 7 weren't offered as I guess they didn't think enough people had unlimited downloads and speedy Internet connections in those days. The situation is exactly the same with OS X, where recent updates have been offered as downloads for about £25.

In reply to a post by AEP:

if it was wider my eyes would have to scan left and right

But that's exactly what I want to do in the situation I describe. I want to look left while I'm editing the code, then look right when I want to look something up or cut and paste from the documentation. It's easier for me if I concentrate on one window at a time but don't have to use the keyboard or mouse to switch between them.

This is the way I work in real life when reading a book. I have two pages in front of me but only concentrate on one at a time; I might flick my eyes over to a diagram or table on the opposite page, then back to where I was reading. It's easier to do this than to have to turn the page to see the diagram then turn back to the text.

Similarly:-

I have a 17" laptop, 1600 x 900. Suits me perfectly, but it sounds as though Win 8 wouldn't be up to the job, though it may get the layout.

Normal usage is gadget bar on the right, which I find very useful. Thunderbird aligned to the left with its tight margin just inside the gadget bar. I have nine Thunderbird, most of them with sub-folders of my own creation, and for convenience these accounts are expanded. I have the accounts list vertical scroll bar 1.5" to the right of the left-hand margin.

A browser window sits conveniently between the Thunderbird accounts vertical scroll bar and the gadget bar.

So far so good - this might work. But come a Formula 1 race on Sky, which I don't have, I have a window with vipbox.tv streaming a Sky feed positioned to the left of the screen, and to the right I have the Live Timing screen from the Formula 1 website. This is ideal as I can align them vertically and just flick my eyes sideways as desired.

I get the impression from some other posts here that those two streams may fail to run concurrently in a satisfactory manner under Win 8?

The problem goes away next year as BBC has all the races thankfully.