With the long variable/class names used these days, and the availability of clear, small fonts and 16:9 displays, 80 columns seems silly. But I'm against raising it, even to 100 columns. 100 really isn't much more than 80. And then you start to lose things like being able two view two pages of code side by side.

The other problem is that 100+ column lines are just flat out hard to read. It's hard to follow text that far across these screen. A few years ago when I was working with Objective-C I came across methods used with each variable on one line and really grew to like that.

It's similar to the way source code is laid out in books. But is that because the code is more readable that way, or is it a consequence of the layout? Books are taller than they are wide and usually have generous margins.