Widescreen LCD monitors are laptops are all the rage now. Wikipedia cites lower associated manufacturing costs.

Basic geometry and algebra explain why manufacturers are saving money and consumers may be deceived about what they are getting.

Monitors are measured along the diagonal. A 14" widescreen sounds like a '14" screen...only wider", but it is not. It a screen with a wide width-to-height ratio, such as 16-to-10, with a diagonal that that measures 14". The wider and flatter a rectangle gets for a given diagonal length, the smaller the area. That means a 14" widescreen LCD has less screen area than a standard screen with a 4:3 ratio. By my calculations, it's about 6% smaller, or the equivalent of removing about half an inch from the standard size 14" monitor.

That's why the manufacturers are saving money! But wait, the widescreen version of 1280x1024 is often given as 1440x900, as in this newegg.com article which makes widescreens sounds like they only have positives.

At first glance, the widescreen resolution looks like it might make sense-- it is in fact a little shorter than the standard version. But the areas don't add up. They are within about 1% of being the same, when the widescreen should be about 6% less. So what happened here? The pixel size on the widescreen was reduced about 3% in each direction.

So in summary, A 14" widescreen is not like the 14", but wider, it is shorter, smaller and likely has smaller pixels. That explains why they can be cheaper and a little lighter, too. If you watch a lot of widescreen DVDs or need to see lots of spreadsheet columns, maybe widescreen is right for you.

Otherwise, consider your monitor shape carefully.

The story sometimes bigger is smaller - widescreen monitors reports on the same topic.