Edit: Wow, that was an odd thing to mistype. WINDOWED MODE. If I could get a mod to edit that, it'd be nice ><
Finding ways to force this, as to not make games look stretched or allowing us to use the game on a second screen, or any other kinds of things you could do with Windowed mode could make the already smooth experience much better.
Also, forgive me if this isn't the proper place for this, but do let me know where I should post instead.

i have a 16:10 monitor so games without widescreen support (i.e. all good old games) get stretched and ugly. but a while ago i learned that many video cards have ways around this problem.
with my card, i can open up ATI catalyst control center and choose from:
· scale image - full panel size (default setting that stretches to fit to the edges of my screen, yuck)
· scale image - maintain aspect ratio (enlarges the image to the top and bottom edges of my screen with black bars on the sides)
· use centered timings (1:1 pixel res)
so i either have it set to the second or third option depending on the game.
make sure you have the latest video card drivers and try to find options like these.

Hey, I've asked myself the same thing yesterday, wanting to play a game which not supports my dual screen (the cursor gets off the first screen if I go too much to the right, then it crashes the game x( ).
The only way to "solve" this problem has been to use a virtual computer solution, like VMWare or VirtualPC. It's kind of boring to set up, because you need to install windows (or whatever) into it, patch it etc... But it works.
Hope that helps !

yeah i agree a windowed mode would be great. means i can play on my work laptop and check my email at the same time :)

agreed!

I concur :)

yeah, that would be great :>

It may be important that you indicate somehow which games will run in windowed mode or higher resolutions, then. The reason I canceled Gametap a while back was because I was unable to play things like Plaescape without stretching and cutoff. If there's not a way around it here for many of the classics or if people don't know in advance that they'll be able to work around it, it may mean fewer sales.

Some game have a community patches which enable the widescreen.
I'd also be interested in the programs you guys have been using to test windowed mode on games.

Indeed, many games do have community patches. But if the idea of GOG is to have games on site that people simply pay for, download, and are able to play then they shouldn't have to mess with community patches or anything else to get these old games running in a reasonably attractive way on monitors with modern aspect ratios. I think they'd do more business in the long run if that is taken care of for the user.
Additionally, will older games that can reasonably scale their graphics (things that are already 3d-accelerated) have the option to go for higher, more modern resolutions, say, 1440x900?

for the games that use DOSBox just press alt-enter

Not always, not always. Sorry, but for some you have to tweak the .inis, some with patches, some which natively supports them, and some you can't :(

Well, then, that would be a nice feature for them to take care of for us, as more and more people now have widescreen resolutions and displays with native resolutions.

Indeed, the option of using widescreen resolutions with 3D games would be great, but it's no simple matter: it's not only the resolution that needs to be changed but the aspect ratio too, and even if you can change resolution and AR, the interface will look wrong in many games (stretched, etc.).
So if it can be done good, but if not, I'm just happy having the game working in win xp.