My current setup at home and work¹ is a ~24" 16:9 1920x1080 but spun to portrait. There are a number of monitors out there that support this, failing that get one with standard vesa fixings and get a stand/arm you can attach it to that way around. These each stand beside a ~32" 16:9 2560x1440 screen².

Sometimes the big landscape screen gets used as just that, sometimes as effectively two portrait screens³⁴. The tall one is very nice for reading documents/mail/HN/… and such, though a little thin occasionally⁵ so 16:10 would be nicer. The main Windows taskbar lives on the tall screen⁶. Not an optimal setup when sat down⁷ I find, but as I stand most of the time and it works really well for me like that, limitations when seated isn't a big issue.

[1] I gave up asking and just brought my own in, along with the standing desk I'd been asking about for years

[2] almost the same dot pitch as the other screen, so no need to faf with scaling to get things to look sufficiently similar on them

[3] when doing that I effectively have three tall thin screens - one at 1080x1920 two at 1280x1440 (about 13:16).

[4] in fact the Samsung one supports pretending to be two monitors that way using two inputs, one for each side, though I use the OS-/app-level positioning instead so I can nudge one side wider in some contexts

[5] some web designs assume you have more than 1080 pixels in width if you have more than 1024, in fact some just assume 1280+ full-stop (less a little in case some uses with 1280 have their taskbars on the side). For instance Google's right bar gets ~⅓ cut off for instance when searching for things that make it appear, and a number of online stores lose current basket information (that they put on a column at on the right) unless I scroll or move to the other screen

[6] top here, bottom at home, the difference due to how the monitor stand heights work out and the limits of my work space at home meaning the two screens line up differently in the two locations

[7] it is hard to find a comfortable position where I'm not craning my neck a little or forcing myself to set _too_ straight up

The whole reason we switched to 16:9 is for more real estate for side-by-side apps. Perhaps with the age of insane ads embedded with everything, that extra vertical space is more important.

Not sure I agree with that.

> The whole reason we switched to 16:9 is for more real estate for side-by-side apps.

The whole reason of switching to 16:9 is because TVs did and it’s cheaper for the manufacturers, AND they can advertise the same (or larger) diagonal for less square inches.

When monitors went from 4:3 to 16:9, tv's were going to 16:10.

That’s not really correct. TV went straight from 4:3 SDTV (NTSC/PAL) to 16:9 HDTV. There is no 16:10 TV (signal) aspect ratio. It’s true that there were a few "HD ready" LCD TVs with 16:10 aspect ratio (1680x1050 resolution), but those were never dominant and didn’t precede 16:9 TVs (which were already there in CRT/Plasma/RPTV times). Computer monitors on the other hand went from 4:3 and 5:4 to 16:10 in the mid-2000s, and then to 16:9 from ~2010 on, after 16:9 had already been well-established on TVs.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_aspect_ratio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16:10_aspect_ratio

Indeed I flipped which was 16:9 and which was 16:10 in my head.

What TVs were ever 16:10?

I got these flipped, monitors went 16:10, then changed to 16:9

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/16:10_aspect_ratio

So when did TVs go to 16:9?

When HDTV became a thing. Mid-late 90s?

It took a long time to really become mainstream, TV broadcast was firmly 4:3 until roughly the mid-2000s, and 16:9 TVs were expensive until LCD TVs became cheap. There was a long interim period were 16:9 was mainly a DVD aspect ratio you watched on 4:3 TVs with black bars.

One of the many reasons I won't upgrade to windows 11 anytime soon, you can't move the task bar. Vertical bar wastes far less valuable space.

This was for me the most baffling regression of "upgrading" from Windows 10.

Thank goodness I have an XPS13 with a 16:10 LCD. Now the fixed horizontal bar makes it feel like a 16:9 again. I tried auto-hiding the task bar but that just made other things behave weirdly.

I assume you mean with out messing with the registry[1]. Disclaimer I have not tried this.

[1]: https://www.minitool.com/news/how-to-move-windows-11-taskbar...

I'm returning a newly purchased 12.9" iPad Pro because the user experience is so awkward. Content is too small, the viewing area is too large, and the balance is awful on the $300 keyboard stand. I might swap for the 11".

I have a 39" 4k that I divide like you've described, two full width terminals on either side in pillar box framing my work area.

The 4:3 display is also why I initially considered a Framework laptop, but after exploring their performance and limitations, I'd rather just buy the panel and cyberdeck it for a fifth of the cost.

I just hide both dock/taskbar and menubar and use a tiling window manager to switch between split and full screen.

Dock and menubar are waste of space for 99% of the time that you're using your computer.