A 17 inch monitor is the main stream. The image on any computer monitor is composed of a large number of dots called "pixels." Thus, the amount of information which can be displayed on a given monitor is defined in terms of the number of pixels regardless of the physical size of the monitor itself. This is called resolution. The acceptable minimum resolution is 640X480, which means 640 pixels across and 480 pixels vertically. Many popular monitors support higher resolutions. It is more comfortable for the user to have a large space on the monitor when one needs to use more than one program simultaneously such as transporting text and pictures from one program to another.