Hi, I have an older Dell laptop inspiron 5100 with xp, 1 g ram, 160 gb memory, radeon 7500c that has screen resolutions of 800x600 & 1024x768. I would like to have a dual monitor setup and am wondering if I can use a widescreen monitor. I hooked a widescreen up to it briefly before but everything was stretched out. I didn't have much time to try to rectify it at the time, but what I did try didn't work. So before I buy a monitor I would like to know if I can use a widescreen monitor(which is all I see for sale anymore) or do I need to purchase a square one. Thanks!!!

It all depends. I have friends who use Thinkpad T41's with 24" widescreen monitors with the same video card (Ati 7500). They first had to update the video driver to enable the higher resolution. However, these monitors are used via a DVI port on a docking station so I don't know how it'll work via standard VGA on your Dell. What you could try is updating your video driver to the latest Catalyst drivers, take the laptop to a Best Buy and see if they'll let you hook it up to test. If they want to sell a monitor, they may allow it. Worth a try.

Thanks, I'll try that and post the results

ok!