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Still designing for 800x600?  We might finally be able to look at 1024x768 instead.

Browser stats at W3Schools suggest that only 8% of the population are still using 800x600 settings.

What should you do? It Depends, of course.  If your client has analytics software (and everyone should, given that Google Analytics is free and works great), check it to see what their individual traffic is like.

But if you don't know what you individual client's stats are like, there's a good chance you can start designing for 1024x768.  Exceptions may still include, at some level:

• K-12 and higher ed: generally it takes longer for computers and monitors to turn over in this environment, so you may wish to double check on the average age of the computer if this is your target audience.
• Some non-profits also have a slower turnover rate for computers.
• Some less profitable small/micro businesses may have slow turnover
• And of course, senior citizens either tend to hold on to their computers for a long time, or they blow up the monitor resolution, not knowing they could keep the resolution they have but increase the size of the text.

In general, though, I think you can safely design for 1024x768 at this point.  I would keep my designs to 950-960 px wide.

If you keep the left plus content column to 744 px wide (leaving roughly 200 px for the right column), your readers will be able to use your site comfortably at 800x600 without side-scrolling when reading.  This means that the right column should contain less critical information, like banner ads, product highlights, etc.