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?