I currently have a Dell 19" TFT 4:3 monitor and considering going to a 24" or 27" widescreen. That being said, except for gaming, most of the material I look at, MS Office documents, are for 4:3 displays. I want these to remain displayed, even on a 16:9 monitor in 4:3 format. Is this done automatically or does the OS or graphic card driver need to be manually instructed. GPU is a Nvidia 8800GTS 640mb so I'm not concerned about the card have the processing capability needed, more about the format and how it's done. Thanks in advance.

Well, you can resize the window & leave it that way. Next time you run it, it'll be in the same size.

If you're talking about a program that's designed for non 16:10 (16:9 is for HDTV; 16:10 is for monitors), the screen will be stretched to fit. The pictures/text will be fat. I have a few games that do that.