Need external monitor for Portege R500

The screen on the R500 (PPR50E-01301TEN) is fine for use for an hour or two on the go, but if I use it persistently through the day, I get a bad neck and headaches (may be the angle that you have to look at it as much as its small size). So I want to get external monitors for it at work and at home. The home one would preferably be an LCD TV.
The trouble is, Windows tells me that the supported widescreen resolutions for the external monitor are 1280x768, 1920x1080 and 1920x1200. Linux only wants to offer me 1280x800 or lower, although I might be able to fix that with a bit of tweaking. Assuming Windows is right, does anyone know of an 18-21" widescreen monitor or TV with one of the supported resolutions as its native resolution, or even as a supported resolution? I can't find anything.
It probably needs to be 1920x1xxx, because 1280x768 is going to be pretty grainy close up on a 18"+ monitor. Why aren't any of the intermediate resolutions common on widescreen monitors (e.g. 1440x900 or 1680x1050) supported? If it can do 1920x1xxx, it should be able to do them.

As far as I know Port Replicator cannot make things better. This external device just past through the signal that comes from the notebook itself.
Which resolution you need for your monitor?

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