Set Windows XP For A Wide Screen LCD

Over the years and with the introduction of LCD monitors for PC's there has been some confusion on what the screen resolution should be set to for wide screen display. Some users set it for the wrong resolution and just live with it being distorted or think that their monitor or video card is bad. This is probably not true and it is probably just the settings which can be fixed real easily. First, lets talk about what is screen resolution. Screen resolution is the amount of pixels your monitor and video card displays across and down on the given monitor size. So an example setting would be 1024 x 768, so translated into width and height it would be 1024 pixels across and 768 pixel down on a standard 17" monitor. The higher the numbers the higher the resolution, the more pixels are displayed. Second lets talk about dimensions, on a standard computer monitor its 4:3, the ratio of width versus height. So 640 x 480 would be of that approximate proportion of 4:3. The aspect ratio defines the shape of the displayed image on your monitor. So a standard monitor is 4:3 and a wide screen is 16:9 or 16:10. So if we want the image on the monitor to look right we need to have 16:10 ratio of the resolution. Third here are some sample resolutions for wide screen use. 1280 x 800 , 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1080. Many times these are referred to by letter designations like WUXGA or WVGA and so on. I personally don't care for the letter designation since it means you have to translate or know what the numbers are in order to set your resolution. But you can usually find all the resolution display numbers by just searching for "WUXGA standards". So by using one of the above screen resolutions we can quickly and easily change our resolution so that the display looks correct and not scrunched up.