I have my netbook hooked up to a monitor and of course the two have different resolutions. If I boot up and then configure the second monitor, plasma-netbook is correctly sized for the netbook monitor and lives there just fine. But if I kill it and restart it, it still automatically locates itself on the netbook screen (despite any attempt to move it...it just goes back there the next chance it gets). Unfortunately, it also sets itself to the geometry of the VGA monitor.

I tried starting it with plasma-netbook --geometry=1024x600+1280+0 but it seems to completely ignore this parameter and size itself too large anyway. How can I configure it to start at the correct resolution when the monitor is attached?

Or better, how can I configure it to live on the VGA monitor whenever it's attached? (Since the monitor is to the left of the netbook, this would place it at 0,0 I believe.)

Do you have "krandrtray" running? If so, please try right clicking on its tray icon ( which should cause the settings to be applied )

nope. plasma-netbook retains its geometry even when right-clicking on krandrtray's icon. however, changing to the netbook screen's resolution to something else and then back again fixes it. I guess it's an effective workaround even if somewhat silly to implement.

Please file a bug at bugs.kde.org, as Plasma Netbook should initialise it's resolution correctly.