also with regards to comment #1 about macs - i recently switched to mac and find myself with EXACTLY this same problem on my mac. made somewhat worse by the stupid horizontality of the mac laptop screen.
most text content is formatted vertically because that is how people read. text content makes up the vast majority of content, period. (email, web browsing, news, document writing, etc.)
only video, spreadsheets, music, and presentations are typically horizontal. and as a percentage of time spent using computers these are minimal.
i hate the short fat screen that my mac has and much preferred the overall smaller but much taller screen my old thinkpad
my current resolution is 1280 h x 800 v; my old thinkpad was 1024x768. so my current screen is 60% wider than it is tall, versus my old screen which is only 33% wider than it is tall.
i have so much more wasted space on this widescreen than i used to have, and i’d definitely prefer this macbook to be taller and narrower instead of short fat.
i wonder what apple were thinking when they went this particular design direction?
and i hope i find an application like the ones discussed here that i can use on my mac, the grid concept is a good one, as is the freesnap approach (size snap).
cheers!