Widescreen or Bust?

Lately when I've been checking my mail, I keep getting this annoying popup:

"There is a screen resolution problem

Your screen resolution is set below our minimum recommendation of 1024 x 600 pixels. You can continue with your current settings, but the newest version of Mail may not display properly.

Try increasing your screen's resolution (In Windows or Mac OS Help, search for "screen resolution"). If you're using most versions of Windows, here's how:"

And so on. Am I the only one who sets their desktop at 800x600 resolution because it's too small for me to read text comfortably otherwise? Not all of us have the best eyesight, young and old included, and there are people with far worse eyesight than me.

I realize computer monitors sold nowadays are widescreen standard and I plan to keep using my old CRT monitor until it dies, but it still urks me when I'm basically told that my resolution must be wrong as opposed to having it that way for a legitimate reason.

Now Firefox has a plugin option where you can increase the size of the text in your browser so you can adjust it as you like. Of course this does tend to get a bit annoying when you have to do it for EVERY website you visit, hence why I prefer to stay at 800x600 and even then, I still have to adjust it sometimes because half the webpage is missing otherwise.

My big worry is that one day I'll start getting messages that say 'This website CANNOT be displayed at 800x600' and I'll have no choice but to get used to squinting. I'd like to think that not spending years squinting at the computer screen is a major reason why my eyes aren't worse than they are now. But maybe I'm in the minority on this, I dunno...