putty+ssh+screen = auto resizing?

[Aaron Griffin]

Hey guys,
It's probably not all that important that the context of this is while
running screen via a putty session, though it could be related to
other things.

When I "screen -R" or "screen -RD", the window is always resized
rather small.  I have putty setup to be larger that the standard 80
column window, but it always seems to flip back to 80ish columns when
I reattach.

On a related note, in a normal fullscreen terminal (and emulator),
things that use progress bars (wget, et al) span the entire width of
the terminal, but when under screen they seem to span the same 80ish
column area.

Now, I have no hard facts, but I'm pulling at straws - it seems that
screen is set to use 80 column widths by default.  Is there anyway I
can:
a) use a typical wide terminal (132 columns)
or more ideally:
b) tell screen to use whatever width the parent terminal reports

Thanks in advance