No, that's how LCDs work (for both laptops and PCs) -- a 1024x768 LCD is 1024x768 no matter what you do with it. There are two ways for an LCD to handle a lower resolution:
- Display the smaller picture accurately in the centre of the screen with a black border.
- Interpolate the small picture to the full screen by duplicating rows and columns. This would look good if the picture was 512x384, but any standard PC resolution looks weird because there's only room to duplicate some rows and columns.
Personally I prefer the first option, but there should always be a stretch option in the laptop's BIOS or control software to change it.