Web Design - Compatibility Issues Arrgghhhh

I'm finally making some progress with my website, which is good because the deadline is less than a week away! However ive been quite naive so far in designing my site, ive been happily designing away looking at my pages on my nice 1280x1024 size monitor and it all looks splendid.

So whats the problem? Well i found out today that 49% of web users still use 800x600 size monitors, my question to these people is WHHHYYYYYYY! 49% is a hefty chunk of potential viewers to my site so i'm going to have to rethink some of my page layouts and try and get them to be viewable in smaller windows.

Here are the articles ive got my information from

http://www.jgtemplates.com/learn/web/browser001.asp

http://www.webmonkey.com/99/41/index3a_page2.html?tw=design

Although this could be a significant problem, it might not be as bad as i first thought. I'm willing to bet that although 49% of total web users still have stupidly small screens my specfic target audience is unlikely to have the same problems. The majority of university students will have a computer that is up to date and fairly new and i beleive most of the computers on campus facilities will be 1024x768 if not bigger. With that in mind maybe i can breathe easily and not completly overhaul the design of my site, however what ive just said is an assumption and something i need to verify,quickly!

With this in mind ive been changing the layout and size of my pages today and heres the results

Weve gone from this (suitable for viewing only in 1280x1024, anything smaller and you wont be able to see everything without scrolling, scrolling is bad)

To this (viewable in 1024x760 without any problems)