I have seriously tackled the problem of monitor size, and come up with some interesting results. First, the data. I examined a bunch of catalogs to see what is being sold these days. Here is the distribution of listings:
14": 13
15": 36
17": 58
20": 38
Clearly, the catalog sellers seem to think that the 17" monitor is the most important to sell. Our course, there are intervening factors that make the distribution of sales effort different from the distribution of installed base in writers. Nonetheless, I consider this heartening news.
On the other hand, our surveys of writers online have been disturbing. Here is the data we have so far:
13": 3
14": 7
15": 7
17": 1
20": 0
Even more disturbing, we have 18 PC owners and no Mac owners in the respondent group.
Lastly, I re-examined the question of reworking the screens to fit into 800 x 600 and have come to the conclusion that there are no serious technical arguements against the resizing. The only significant penalty will be the addition of one level of menu hierarchy in the Data and Function menus of the role editor. That hurts, but it's too minor an issue to decide the question.
My conclusion, barring further data, is that we should proceed with the resizing.