So which design paradigm wins?

Fixed width designs or fluid?

I'll cast my vote first and say fixed width is the way to go...for now...
Designing websites is all about readability and not about realestate. It wasn't too long ago that we were very limited in our screen size and so people ran browsers maximized and as such we developed webistes that were set for maximum real estate usage. But that trend is changing. As screen sizes get larger and 1600x1200 becomes more and more common, fluid layouts that use that entire space are becoming les and less readable. Longer line lengths make the content harder to read to the human eye - that's science. So the answer is a fixed width layout somewhere in the 500-700 pixel range. Sure you are taking some form of control away from the user, but isn't it the job of the designer to look out for whats best for their users? To in essence educate thier users? You may say "Well newspapers are big and use all the space on the paper" but do they really? If you cut a newspaper up into it's columsn and attached them end to end, you'd have a fixed width website. Print has been doing this kind of stuff for years, focusing the reader on the content at hand by limiting the width of their columns. Why should web media be any different? You may say "Well look at all that wasted space on the side of your web browser window there". But how many other applications do users REALLY run full screen all the time? Why is a web browser held to a different standard? Mostly just because that's how it's been in the past I'd venture to say.

Untill we get an intelligent CSS system that can adjust a page for multiple columns if the width of the browser allows it, the way to go from a design standpoint is to fix the width of your layout.

Thoughts?

I could have written your reasons myself

Like you said, the whole point of being a WEB DESIGNER, just like a PRINT ARTIST, is to provide the end user wiht the best possible end product. It's not about a loss of control... it's about flow control.

heres sumptin kinda interesting
msn is starting to use css layouts, maybe this will be a good thing! maybe they will get sick of hacking everything to work in thier own browser and actually fix that crudd!

Yeah I noticed that... they're aiming for standards on their MSN Search and MSN Today pages... It's a good move, and maybe it'll be the straw that breaks the camels back.

unfortunately, if the make ie compliant then they will loose a lot of customers to the other browsers so i still dont think they will

but very interesting they did this though