[Mac User #001]

I swear I've seen this done. Its a smaller screen, usually as wide as your main screen is tall, so when you flip it 90˚, they are the same height. And Dashboard is always open on that screen, so they only need to mouse over to it to get to a widget. How can this be done? Or am I imagining this?

[Cadaver]

The Apple 30" display is 2560 x 1600. So a standard 20" 4:3 display at 1600x1200 will be virtually the same height and resolution when rotated 90° (1600 pixels tall) as the 30" display.

A 23" widescreen display and a 20" 4:3 display are also both virtually the same size physically screen height-wise (and same 1200 vertical pixel resolution). A 24" display screen height is a little bigger than a 20" 4:3, though same 1200 pixel resolution.

Hard to get a wide 16:10 and a square 4:3 or 5:4 display of the same physical height and resolution if you're looking at 22" widescreen or smaller -- 1680x1050 is the resolution of a standard 20"/22" widesceen, but I don't think I've ever seen a 4:3 at 1400x1050 other than in 14" PC laptop screens.

When I was using an Apple 30" display, I would occasionally connect a second display rotated 90°. Worked just fine (though now that I have a second video card I've changed my setup just recently to three displays instead: 20" 4:3 + 24" 16:10 + 20" 4:3).

Not sure I've seen a utility to keep Dashboard open though. But there are utilities that will allow you to put widgets on the desktop, which is what you may have seen.

[Mac User #001]

You don't need a utility; a simple Terminal command and a restart will do the trick, but I never thought of that. Yea, thats probably it.

Thanks for all the other great info.

Question answered, thread closed, delete if you please.