Well, I would prefer a less wide one and have more height.
People would say nay to that screen all the time (they have to move their head to the left and to the right all the time). If it would have more height, we could at least see the face of the dead person in that screenshot
.
Anyway I think it sucks there are still (three years later now) no 2048x1536 (4:3) or 2000x1600 (5:4) LCD's. (Well, I think there is a 2048x1536 retina iPad now?)
Simply because movies are recorded in 2.35:1 or at least closer than 16:9 than to 4:3, it's better to view movies on a wide-screen. But I think it would be better movies would be recorded on 4:3. And watching movies is only a small part of my computer time.
Because the eyes are next to each other, its logical screens are a bit wider than they are high. But I think 4:3 would be best for that - or at least better than 16:10, 16:9 or even 2.35:1. It's not like the eyes are very far away from each other. If the eyes would above each other, a 3:4 monitor would be better than a 9:16 or 10:16.
Probably even still better (for the eyes) would be a ellipse shaped monitor (with 4:3 ratio if a rectangle was drawn around it) - but that's probably not that practical.
It's indeed (also) a matter of preference; people like newtekie1 like to have two portrait papers next to each other on the screen. Not me - I never do that.
"However, no one said we have to keep the diagonal measurement the same."
True or not (me indeed thinks the diagonal is not interesting): you compare a 4:3 19.2x14.4 to a 16:10 23.04x14.4, which is of course not really fair.
Patherx12 compares a 4.3 19.2x14.4 with a 16.10 19.2x12.8, which is also not really fair.
To have a fair comparison, you'd want to compare two monitors with the same nr. of cm2 screen surface. Then, I prefer 4:3 or even 5:4 to 16:10/16:9 hands down.
Would we only have 1 eye, than indeed a square (of better: round) monitor would be best. But because we have 2 eyes next to each other, 4:3 is better.
I hear people say it all the time: 'wider is better'. Which, in itself, is totally nonsense. Than a 100.000x100 (or even 1.000.000x10) would be better than a 3651x2738 monitor (both approx. 10 million pixels).
A spherical monitor would be nice too:
http://www.umassmag.com/2009/Fall-09/images/science-world.jpg
Superb gaming, for some games. Like RISK and Civilization, and maybe a type of Settlers (maybe in combo with a normal monitor).