[H] 24 inch montior

[Winterlight]

How does a 24 inch monitor display a full word or excel page? 24 inch is a 
wide screen, right? so is it like a wide screen laptop in that you loose 
the full page view of a standard monitor.  How about things like games? 
When you load it does it fill the screen.

I guess what I am asking is that when switching from a 21 inch CRT what is 
the difference, other then a high resolution, and is there any down size to 
the wide screen?