What monitor to go with-Widescreen?

I am a recent switcher buying a Mac Pro shortly to replace, well work alongside, my Windows XP computer. I currently have a old 15 inch monitor on my XP machine that I'll be replacing. I want to replace this with a new monitor and most of all since I'll use it with both my XP and my Mac Pro I want one that has dual dvi or a dvi and vga input.
What is new to me though is it seems for Macs all the monitors Apple sells are Widescreen. This isn't something I saw with PC's but how important is it? I have looked at 3rd party monitors and see some that are widescreen, some that aren't. I have no problem with going with widescreen even if it costs more considering it is something that there's an advantage to.
The question, should I go with a Apple monitor or is there a 3rd party monitor that stands out as a good monitor and most of all that is cheaper? Seems a lot of the others are cheaper than Apple.

Widescreen seems to be the way things are going, I think even Vista is going to be in designed with it being viewed that consumers will potentially have Widescreen monitors.

I asked a similar kind of question, it seems the most obvious choices are either Apple, Dell and ViewSonic are meant to be good.

I assume Dell being the most popular and they look good aswell. Apple's monitors seem a bit too much, even if they are good.

BIG D 04 said:

Widescreen seems to be the way things are going, I think even Vista is going to be in designed with it being viewed that consumers will potentially have Widescreen monitors.

I asked a similar kind of question, it seems the most obvious choices are either Apple, Dell and ViewSonic are meant to be good.

I assume Dell being the most popular and they look good aswell. Apple's monitors seem a bit too much, even if they are good.

Click to expand...

get the samsung 205bw. it is better than the dell and apple in terms of specs. its cheaper and comes with a 3 year warrenty.

I cant speak for the vewisonic.

Got a link...If it's good I might get it as I still like excuse to buy new stuff.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824001081

dont bother picking neweggs warrenty, samsung gives you a 3 year warrenty.

Dell makes the best monitors, period. They often use the same panels that Apple does (actually, the 2005fpw is identical to the 20 inch apple cinema display except for the bezel) and they're far cheaper.

There's a new 20" dell coming out soon that looks fantastic and costs under 300$:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/11/dell-busts-out-e207wfp-20-inch-lcd-for-the-budget-set/

I might be getting that for christmas...

I am interested in this as well and I am interested in watching HDTV on it. I am a current switcher from Windows and I know one thing that is important with HDTV and Vista is first, you have to have a compliant monitor. I think it simply means HDCP which I think the Samsung 205BW seems to do. Next, you need a HDCP compliant video card. I am more concerned with this for Mac but does the new C2D MBP do this?