Some people were, but it wasn't too common. Workstations had far higher resolutions long before this, but home PCs running non 3d accelerated hardware were still mostly 1024x768-ish.

The BeBox itself was vastly different hardware than a standard PC as well, so it could break a lot of rules as far as smooth concurrency and multitasking... kinda like the Amiga did.

Also we had actual 32bit colour, not this 24 + 8 alpha. You could actually look at a rainbow gradient without banding.

2048x1536 was already a thing as well.

Yup, had a 22” Mitsubishi monitor that could do that resolution in ~2002. Everyone would pick on me about the text being so small, but I’d let them sit at my desk squinting and I’d stand ten feet back and read the screen with ease as they struggled. The monitor was a beast though, around 70lbs if memory serves.

Edit:

Pretty sure this is the monitor: https://www.necdisplay.com/documents/ColorBrochures/RDF225WG...