Yuck! I hate it when sites monkey around with max-width. I've got a nice 27 inch monitor. I want to use all of it. It's refreshing to see a site that doesn't insist on second-guessing the width that I set my browser window.
So you look like you watch a tennis game when you read text? Funny.
On a more serious note: A maximum length for text makes sense ergonomically, which is why especially big prints like newspapers or magazines work with columns. Columns however haven't really cought on in the web, because they do not combine very well with the whole scrolling thing.
No one reads well with 200 characters per line. Been demonstrated that they read a lot slower. Even if line height has been increased to alleviate, which it probably hasn't. I'd recommend multiple columns before super-wide text blocks.
