Congratulations rick22 - you win a prize! That is quite possibly the worst bit of advice anyone has ever given so have a banana
Most people have LCD screens these days and they are set to an optimum number of pixels - for 17" and 19" monitors this is usually 1280x1024. Changing the resolution down makes everything look fuzzy so is really not recommended. Also if you end up designing on a resolution of 1024 x 768 then you end up with less space for Photoshop toolbars etc. Honestly, if you are designing to not really mind if 800x600 users have scroll bars but want a fixed width to cater for the masses then just work at around 960-980 px wide, just check the new version of the BBC site to see what I mean.
Resizing your monitor. Tsk.