What happens?

1. dont get an apple, get a dell

2. you can either set it up so that you stretch the image to fit which some say it is fine others say it noticably distorts the image, or you can set it to maintain aspect ratio and have black bars done the side. personally i don't mind either way, although games such as the source ones by valve look great in widescreen.

In addition to what StrangeStranger said, there's a specific reason why you should get a Dell instead of an Apple.

The Dell 2005FPW, the 20.1 widescreen, has the ability to run games without scaling them.

Scaling is the changing the resolution of the monitor via compression/stretching to something other that the native resolution.

This always causes a degradation in image quality. Whether you'll notice that degradation is unknown. Like StrangeStranger said, some do.

With the Dell's ability to run a non-native resolution w/o scaling, you get no degradation at all and the image will just be surrounded by black bars depending on how low you set it for.

Ah right. So the apple will strech the image.

Ok, but I've hered that with the Apple displays the BIOS/POST screen doesent show up on the monitor. THe monitor only comes alive when windows is up. Is this true to the 20" as well?. I've only seen comments on this with the 23" version.