1280x1024 on a 17"/19" TFT screen was common in 2004. Your numbers are from a decade before that. Websites were often optimised for minimum width of 800px to cater also old 800x600 CRT screens from last century.
CRTs are bad for your eyes. I replaced all CRTs in my life with LCD in 2001. They got very inexpensive in 2002.
CRTs were very flexible when choosing a screen resolution- 32x200, 800x600, or even 1600x1200 on a 17" - no problem. Today many cheap LCDs look only fine in their native resolution.
I wish we one could still buy 16:10 or even 4:3 LCD monitors nowadays. A ~4K monitor in 4:3 would be awesome.
