collector, while i agree with you that it is a cop out to design a site to one specific resolution, i still dont think very many people use more than 800×600. i do IT work for the entire district of farmers insurance in my city and have never found anyone using more than the XP and Vistas default 800×600 resolution, other than people with notebooks and lcd monitors, which around here is like 1% of the total people. that might be different in other areas of the country though, i dont know, even our best buy and circuit city stores barely cary any lcd monitors.
the fact is that you still have to support 800×600 at least, and in rare cases you need to support 640×480 and ‘text-only’ browsers, so we cant make the fonts too big either or those people will suffer the exact opposite problems.