Don"t be surprised if the next monitor you get from your IT department is larger than your current one, particularly as more and more business applications are adapted to take advantage of widescreen monitors. "We"re starting to see more business applications being formatted for a wide screen," said Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at iSuppli Corp. in El Segundo, Calif. The market research firm predicts that worldwide shipments of wide-format LCD monitors will nearly quadruple from 9.1 million units in 2006 to 35.8 million units this year.
And businesses that are buying widescreen monitors may tend to pick 20-in. or larger models instead of 19-in. ones because the bigger size is a slightly better fit for some applications, according to Alexander. She said that some documents will default to a two-page spread when displayed on a widescreen monitor. But in a 19-in. model, that page may be cut off slightly, Alexander said.