Confused I am

I can currently 4 table on my laptop at 1600 x 1200 but the screen must scroll slighty in order to do this. My question is if I buy a smaller monitor to 8 table (say a 17 inch with a max res of 1280 x 1024) can I run it at 1600 x 1200 and have it do the same thing (scroll slightly) or does the monitor have to have a max res of 1600 x 1200 to run it at all?

I'm going to take a stab at this... the answer is no.

Your monitor won't display a resolution higher than it's max. Even though the 17" monitor is bigger than your laptop the image will be proportionately the same. In other words, only 4 tables fit onto a 1600x1200 (each table being 800x600) screen regardless of the screens actually viewable area. The only difference being that the tables themselves will be larger on a larger viewable area.

Does that make any sense? Did that even answer your question?