If you use netbook or one of those tiny trave laptops, then all the regular websites will look cramped because of the layout and resolution of your laptop / netbook.
To help yourself in such situations, use Gmail compactor, a greasemonkey script that will maximize the space in Gmail.
All the links which are in the left sidebar including compose mail, inbox and other links will minimize into pretty icons as you can see in this image below :
If you want to further increase the space, use some ad blocker script, which will block all the ads which normally will be found in the right sidebar.