Panel positioning on small screens

[gnome-list phred demon co uk]

Hope someone can help me:

I'm running Gnome on my laptop; just upgraded to 1.2, which definitely runs
faster than whatever version I had before.

On to my problem: My laptop's screen is 800x600, but I use a virtual
scrolling screen at 1024x768. I find that this limits the usefulness of all
those nifty panel applets - most of the time they're off the screen, and I
have to mouse around to view them. What I really want is to be able to pin
the panels to the edges of the _screen_ rather than the desktop. Does
such a mechanism exist? If it doesn't, is it possible? 

-- 
Paul W