Alienware M17x screen resolution.

I got an M17x with an 1900x1200 screen a while ago. The resolution is fine running games but is completely useless running any other application as fonts typically tend to be far too small to read easily. Consequently, I look for a less dense resolution and, as the laptop is equipped with a wide screen, 1440x900 is to my liking. Fine using the high power Nvidia GTX 260M card, but should the laptop ever loose power, there is an automatic switch to the low power Nvidia 9400M which, unfortunately, only support one (1) resolution that allows a circle to stay round (1900x1200). What more is, is that the actual switch also changes the resolution setting to something that is supported, and that setting stays even after switching back to the 260M forceing me to manually change resolution again, and - this move completely rearranges the desktop (this is my real problem).

Apart from that I think that Dell should have equipped the laptop with a video-card that actually supports  the physical screen format - Does anyone know a way to make desktop icon coordinates stay across a resolution change?