> Excellent point regarding the monitor. It's
> never bothered me, viewing a vertical shot on a
> "landscape" monitor and of course some shots just
> lend themselves better to a vertical crop.

It's getting even worse... Now most monitors are wide screens, and to make matters worse they add the menu bars on top of the browser, and tabs at the bottom. Pretty soon you're looking through a wide slit rather than something close to a square.

When your vertical image only takes up half of the screen, it's only natural it won't look as good.