Originally Posted by GeoMaine
About your monitor? You should simply set it in it's native resolution, whichever that may be. 1440 X 900 would be my guess...
In Windows XP you should find it as a listed and available display option. If you don't, now you need to turn to your graphics card and see if there is an updated driver for it for XP. If not, then it's time for a new card; nothing major, any new one off the shelf should be able to display widescreen. You should easily be able to pick one up for under a hundred dollars.
Once the computer is correctly displaying the widesreen resolution, no longer will you have any issues with pictures (including those on websites) or having your computer try to match a standard format (1280x1024) to a monitor that doesn't even know what that resolution is.
Good luck!