This is, of course, a personal preference, but I would much rather have a column with a fixed width based on how many characters we can expect in that column. Lines stretching across the screen at 120+ characters can be unwieldy.

That's the reason i don't maximize windows. Sites like HN let lines of text go way too far for a window that's 1000+ px wide.

I'll take that over a way-too-long line of text any day. Improves readability.

On larger monitors, I usually Ctrl and + (Windows and Linux) or ⌘ and + (Mac) which increases the font sizes. Georgia looks awesome at 18-24px.