Need help with widescreen monitor.
 

I just picked up a ViewSonic VA1912wb and I'm not sure how to get it in it's native resolution of 1440X900. I went into the display settings and found a generic LCD display of 1440X900 under the hardware tab and tried setting it there but it still shows my old res in the settings tab.

Look in the xorg log in /var/logs. Perhaps the horizontal or refresh timing settings are off a bit in your xorg.conf for that resolution, and it can't setup that resolution.

Also, you could try using the gtf program to generate your own modeline.