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I used to completely despise 16:9 monitors, too, until I discovered WinSplit Revolution (free, http://winsplit-revolution.com/ which makes it really easy to maximize windows to the left or right 1/2, 1/3, or 2/3 of the screen, and goes a long way towards making it behave like a pair of side-by-side 960x1080 monitors in portrait orientation.

Tip: I personally redefined WinSplit's default hotkeys to make them more laptop-friendly... ctrl up/down/left/right maximizes to left or right, while ctrl-alt left/right literally throws the window to the adjacent monitor when I'm running with two or more. There are other permutations, but 99.9% of my window moves are to the left or right size.

A 17" laptop with 16:9 1920x1080 treated like adjacent 640x1080 and 1280x1080 monitors is pretty good, once you have WinSplit handy to make it easy to maximize windows to fully-height partial-width against an edge.

Now that 15" monitors with 1920x1080 are available on most higher-end laptops, 16:9 is more tolerable at that size, too, and does have one concrete advantage over a 1400x1050 14.1" display... you can use the laptop on a plane without having to tilt the screen forward if the person in front of you reclines... or at least, you can if the laptop's manufacturer minimizes the bezel.

How do you snap two windows side by side in XP? Oh wait, you can't.

Winsplit Revolution, and I still have it installed on all my win7 machines also, since you can do much more than just side by side with it.

http://winsplit-revolution.com/

Makes working with a large screen and multiple windows so much nicer.

Personally I find dual 19" monitors to be both cheaper, and more usable than a single large screen. Work is usually divided between 1 primary monitor where I have my actual code, and 1 monitor that is being used to display information, references, email, IMs, etc. Combined with some software like Winsplit (No affiliation, just an awesome free product that I've used on every computer I've touched in the past 8 years) you can organize a large number of windows in ways that make sense very quickly. Obviously you can do the same thing with one large screen, but I find having 2 breaks thing up in a way that separates work from the distractions.

Plus, you get to feel like an evil villain in his lair... so that's cool.

Winsplit Revolution is pretty good for this and free. The default settings are ctrl-alt-numpad key moves the window to that section of the display (so 7 would move it to the top left taking up 1/6th of the screen). Hitting the same combo again gives the top left but going 2/3 of the way horizontal, again gives 1/3. The other number pad keys work similarly and the arrow keys move the current window between monitors. I think there's combos for maximizing and minimizing as well.

In Compiz the closest option is the Grid plugin (screenshot), which in turn was inspired on WinSplit Revolution. The current ideas for future features in Compiz would bring on par with Win7 behaviour and even better, like:

• Make the grid size reconfigurable instead of the fixed 33%,50%,66% sizes (ie. Maybe an even better option is to retain the 2x3 grid, but allow the user to specify how big the grid blocks are.)
• Perhaps assign a layout per workspace or hotkey to switch between grid sizes
• In addition to the horizontal 1/2 and 2/3 cycle, it would be great to have a vertical 1/3 and 2/3 cycle. -- Unfortunately that gives a cycle of length 9 when combined with the horizontal cycle. Unless you can think of better shortcut keys.
• Have a way to "group" 2 (or more?) windows (and horizontally organize this group). Concrete example : i like to have 66% of my screen occupied by Firefox and then 33% split in 2 for skype+pidgin contact lists (all of these windows full height).
• Sticky windows - adjacent windows to the one being tiled get resized along with the current one. We would need some way to toggle stickyness to allow a 2x1 layout to be changed into a 3x1
• Original Size (KP5 cycle). Sometimes when you open an application, it has a "typical" size to match the look and feel of the app. For certain circumstances, one might want to use grid to tile it for a brief period of time. It would be useful if grid could remember all windows "start size & position". Makes sense to be a toggle of the KP5 cycle.
• Laptop Keyboard without numberblock - I use grid on my laptop without a numberblock (and I can only assume that KP means numberblock). I overwrote the shortcuts simulating a numberblock with the letter K in the middle. Any chance you could make an alternativ and intuitive default for laptop-keyboards?

If you find yourself in that situation in a Windows environment, Winsplit Revolution may save you if you can get someone to procure a 24" monitor with 1920x1080 resolution. It lets you arrange up to six windows with zero overlap on a single screen using keystrokes. It also lets you move windows to other screens if they're available. I wouldn't use it on a 4:3 aspect ratio unless there were multiple screens available.

On Windows 7, you can resize vertically by moving the cursor to the top of the window (such that it changes to a vertical resize icon) and double-clicking. To tile windows in a more advanced way than right-clicking on the taskbar allows, see Winsplit Revolution or GridMove.

Have you tried Winsplit Revolution? Been using it for a while now, and it's awesome in conjunction with AllSnap.

Of course, this is with two laptops and two monitors on my desk at most times (although one of the laptops is a convertible tablet, so it doesn't really count as an additional screen.

And another few examples of where I've found that multiple monitors come in handy:

-Separate Media monitor: Dedicated to Winamp, VLC and any other programs you may use for your music and/or video needs
-Separate PIM & Communication monitor: E-Mail, IM, calendaring...
-Separate VM monitor - I run Ubuntu for Android stuff, and when I'm trying to look up a tutorial on how to patch and compile some module or other, the last thing I want to be doing is minimizing windows back and forth
-Separate monitor for big complicated programs that like to be maximized. IDEs, DAWs (although those usually span across all my available monitors), things like Photoshop...

There's a link to the Windows version of Divvy on the Mac Divvy page.

I use WinSplit Revolution, though. It's a free Window app that is similar to Divvy.

What I really wish I had, when I must use Windows, is a Windows version of xmonad. It has excellent support for arranging windows within large screens and on multiple monitors, once you get used to it.