I just started playing Monk on my brothers account, and dw dagger/fist is pretty nice for me. But I'm reading around that 1Handed+ shield is standard?

hmm...not sure about that, but most of my friends are dual wielding.

I use dw almost exclusively. Its just way faster and you can get loads of stats on each weapon. If you have decent gear and resist, you dont need a shield. I farm act 1 with a base of 228MF with a shield (for the extra mf), but other than that, I wold recommend dw all the way to act 1 inferno at least. not sure about further than act 1, cause i get stomped, lol.

If you go with 500 LoH on both weps, you will be gaining roughly 2k life per second, and you can get extra crit, extra vit, or dex. If your armor is rather low, I would suggest going with 1 hand + shield, as the shiled could give you a substantial amount of armor.

Both dual wield and 1hand + shield are viable. Dual wield is generally faster for farming, but more expensive then going a defensive spec. If you are looking to just progress through inferno, i would suggest going a defensive spec because you can finish inferno with like 500k worth of gear (there is a post on the blizz monk forums showing that some guy did it). If you are looking to farm, go with a dual wield build.

It depends on your current survivability. On Inferno Act 1 you should be looking at around 300 All Resist (AR). Act 2 around 500 and Act 3, about 700+. Once you have hit those AR benchmarks with > 30k hitpoints, dual wield is viable with good weapons.. Look for weapons with + crit dmg% and a socket with as high dps as possible (800 dps and above).

FewA good tip if you are trying to dual wield, but are on the poor side, look for Vitalityon weapons. It is cheaper, and you can skip git on armor to make it cheaper.

Shield really used to be a necessity, but since the difficulty nerfs, anything will be workable if you have sufficient defensive stats. It used to be that you needed the block chance - you don't anymore.