My laptop monitor's native resolution is 1280×800 and it just isnt big enough for me. I tried to set the resolution higher, but my graphics card only showed options upto 1280×800, and I figured that was the max res my card would allow. I found a monitor out on the street a few days ago and its native resolution is 1024×768. I have been playing around with it a bit. I was looking under the resolutions for it, and I can set it upto 1400×1050, so apparently my card allows for more than 1280×800, so why can't I set my laptop monitor to higher?
How to set the main monitor to a higher resolution
displayresolution
Related Solutions
The most likely reason is that the EDID data of your monitor is corrupted or not transferred correctly.
EDID tells your system which features the monitor has and which resolution it supports.
First check if there's anything which could prevent the EDID exchange: Broken cable, damaged connector, VGA-DVI adapter, one-monitor-two-workstations switch, ...
You could try to completly disable EDID for your monitor, a quick Google search revealed that this frequently resolved similar problems for other users.
If this can't be done with the driver software, a last resort would be to disable the pins responsible for EDID on your DVI cable.
Taken from: http://www.overclock.net/ati/47962-way-disable-edid.html
However do be careful: do your own research first and best try with a separate DVI cable first.
If you attempt to clone the laptop screen to the external monitor, you will only get 1366x766, however, if you use the external monitor as either extend or as the only monitor, you will get 1920x1080.
Please note that the laptop screen resolution should be in the specifications when you buy it - unlike CRT monitors, flat panels are made up of a set amount of pixels and whilst you can choose a lesser total and "stretch" (or letterbox), you can never go bigger than the total (excluding on a few graphics cards which allow panning - but this is rare now).
Best Answer
Every monitor has a specific set of supported resolutions. 1280x800 is the highest that your laptop monitor supports. It simply doesn't have enough physical pixels to make it any finer than that.
I'm not really sure how your specific monitor does this, because usually they are the same thing, but your monitor could have the ability to take a 1400x1050 image and shrink it down to its native 1024x786 display, which means you lose a lot of the image quality (and sort of defeat the point of the high resolution). The Wikipedia article has more info if you're interested in how it works.
No, because, like I said, your monitor physically doesn't have enough "dots" to display the image any sharper than it already is. I know it's frustrating, but there's no solution to this, unfortunately. It's like asking how you can make your car go faster; you can't, at least not easily. Sure, you could change the engine,1 but then you might as well get a new car. Like @studiohack said, it's a hardware issue, not a software issue, so there isn't anything you can realistically do about it (especially with a laptop).
Why exactly are you looking for a higher resolution? Just to fit more stuff on the screen? Maybe there is a workaround if you're trying to do something specific.
1. Bad analogy, I know. :)