I am wondering what is the best size for pages -- not thinking of the height/length but thinking what would be an optimal width for pages.

With all the new devices that people view the internet with -- Ipad, Iphone, etc. -- plus the wide screens with laptops and desktops.

Does anyone have any opinions as to the best sizes to kinda hit a happy medium for all devices?

When I started with website building ('96) the width was usually 700 to 750 px. Now I make sites with up to 1000px width. I don't spread the contents all over the viewport width, I make a 'content' div in order to keep the contents together, but background graphics can be wider, even cover the entire viewport. Some of this can be seen on the sites in my signature.

I haven't really made any adaption for mobile phones and all the 'i' stuff from Apple. Some of these devices are able to scale the websites to fit their screen, but I guess I'll have to study this a bit further.

I do 1000px width as well.

I usually stay around 940 - 960, since I get a horizontal scroll on my netbook with anything wider. Funny how at the same time extra wide monitors are getting less and less expensive, browsing on tiny screens is getting more and more common
Since VSD doesn't do elastic/liquid pages, I'm thinking two sites might be the way to go. One 'normal' site and an alternate 'mini site' geared towards mobile devices. Or maybe I just need to try one of the elastic templates in the HTML Editor

I'm not a fan of elastic designs. I'm for total control.

That would be my preference, too. It's already enough of a challenge to get everything right within a fixed-width lay out!

Thanks everyone -- I have been working on a site at 900 and was wondering whether to go wider but think I will stay with what I have.

I have thought about making a mini site but am thinking I will wait a while before starting that. I am planning on buying a netbook soon for my travels out of the country -basically for the ease of carrying it and just leave my laptop at home so am glad to hear that 940 is about right for a netbook.

thanks