[Notspot]

This is an interesting question, and something I put quite alot of thought into before I designed my site. In the end decided to go for 980 width but keep the main content of the site under 800 (index on right hand side). Just looked at my GA stats for April and just under 5% were 800x600, 42% at 1024x768, and the rest higher resolutions.

So what do you do? My feeling is that we are targeting the entertainment sector of web users who will more than likely have a decent computer, for my business-to-business sites I stick to 800 because most of the visitors are still struggling on with out of date equipment (you don't need a high resolution for MS Office).

I think that the old 'holy grail' of keeping under 800 is now out of date for the entertainment sectors, but I'd be interested to hear what other designers have to say about this.