I suppose this is more of an opinion thread than a downright technical one, but it's something all of us web designers must consider constantly and I would like to get an idea of what the general consensus is (if there is one).

For a long time, the only way to make a site layout really work all the time was to limit its width. Nowadays there are a lot of CSS tricks that can be used, even without any tables, to keep a layout consistent with a variable width (e.g., a liquid layout). Still, I personally find that a fixed-width layout seems more steady and can even be more attractive when the content is largely textual (wide lines and short paragraphs don't do it for me).

So my question is, how many developers out there build primarily static-width sites, and how many build primarily liquid sites (if you have a choice in the matter), and if you do build static-width sites, what do you think is a reasonable width to expect from your visitors?

I tend to think that even 1,000 pixels in width is okay to expect from most visitors these days, especially to graphically-oriented sites.