1280x1024 If my screen went any higher res i'd do it in an instant, even 1280x1024 is starting to look quite large, think it might be time fur a monitor upgrade
You can know about your visitors resolution (and other things like OS, JS enabled...) from your log analyser or your stat script.
Actually I'm not sure about log analyser (I just checked and awstats don't provide those infos neither ) but Google analytics and other JS script do.
1280*1024 though I still find it best to design in 800*640 since I never have my browser maximized on this computer.
I use 1024x768 for the most part as well. I think around 10-15% of the web would still use 800x600 but f**k em. lol jokes
Am using 1024*768. I Think you have lot of opinions nw as to what people are using. Why don't you add up a poll, to make things more clear. This thread will then provide good resource as to what resolutions does normal visitors use.
1024x768 on my work and home comp.. for peoplez notes i have one site that had 9484 uniques last month resolution users % using 1024x768 5979 63.04% 800x600 1793 18.91% 1280x1024 658 6.94% 1280x800 458 4.83% 1152x864 169 1.78% 1440x900 103 1.09% 1280x768 94 0.99% 1440x900 59 0.62% 1400x1050 74 0.78% 1680x1050 30 0.32% 1280x960 45 0.47% 1920x1200 22 0.23% Site Totals 9484 100.00% these traffic stats were provided by google analytics