According to my Google Analytics, here's the rough popularity of each resolution for my website:

1024x768 - 38.33%

1280x1024 - 35.83%

1280x800 - 10.00%

800x600 - 6.67%

And audience is from Malaysia, USA, Australia and UK.

I think overall it depends who your website is targeted at because most likely either the younger or more tech induced people are the ones running on LCD and at a higher resolution. 6.67% of the those 4 countries ain't a very small number.

Most of my traffic is drawn to my blog than the official site itself. And those who read the articles aren't your normal visitors. So I say until you can determine the type of audience or have facts to prove it's safe to design for higher resolutions, than you should do it.

a 2002 article that still is referred to many today.

http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/99/41/i....html?tw=design