Notebook PCs are rapidly moving toward a future filled with more pixels and more screen real estate, thanks to the unexpectedly rapid proliferation of widescreen displays. Once fairly rare beasts, widescreen notebooks–notebooks with screens that have an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10, as opposed to the 4:3 of standard screens, and are thus wider and able to display more information–have rapidly been increasing in numbers of late. Now, having begun out-shipping notebooks with standard screens for the first time in the first half of 2006, widescreen portables are set to take over nearly 100 percent of the market by 2008, said a new forecast by market researcher IDC, based in Framingham, Mass.