I've asked several people about this, but none have ever heard of it.

The situation:  I've bought a new widescreen laptop (a HP with pre-loaded
software including IE7).  IE7 is showing many or most websites incorrectly:
it 'centers' most websites in the IE7 window (so white space appears on
either side), instead of left-aligning the content.  That's not a problem in
itself, but it seems as though the width allocated for the site is too
narrow.  There are often buttons missing, links missing and text often
'overlaps' other frames or images.  It's as if IE7 doesn't have room to
display everything, so it doesn't try to, even though the IE7 window has lots
of space!

I de-installed IE7 and re-downloaded it.  I played around with text size and
zooming.  I did a reset of the IE settings.  Nothing's worked.

Finally, I downloaded and installed Firefox, and that works without any
issues.  But I'd rather use IE if I can sort this out.
I don't think it's a screen-driver or hardware issue, because surely that
would have caused problems for Firefox too.

Thanks to anyone who can help!