My MBP display settings are set at 1440x800.
You mean 1440x900, right? 
When I set the Vista display settings to 1280x800, I still had to scroll down to get to the start menu. In the full screen menu I could see all of the Vista desktop but it did not use the entire MBP screen.
When I changed the Vista display settings to 1280x960, I had to scroll further in the "non-full screen mode" and when I changed to full screen mode, I could still the entire desktop, but there was a decent amount of unused MBP screen.
This is expected since the dimensions of the MBP physical screen do not match the resolution of the virtual machine. Giving Vista "larger numbers" will always give scroll bars. With Vista set to 1280x800, you might not be able to strech the screen tall enough if your Dock is too large. Either shrink the Dock or make it hide.
I can live with the 1280x800 settings, however, is there a resolution or another work around that would allow me way to have the Vista desktop totally visible and use all of the MBP available screen?
Other than full screen, you should be able to add resolutions to the guest virtual machine . I've done this in Workstation, but haven't done this in Fusion yet.
I guess I could get an external monitor, but I would like to get comfortbale with the display on the MBP screen first.
Any other thoughts or suggestions?
Me personally, I want multiple windows open so I don't want any one window to take up the whole monitor. When I want that, I usually switch to full screen. Many times, I'm using Unity mode, so again, just a window for the VM. Only my main desk machine, which has multiple monitors, do I have a web browser window take a whole monitor. But of course, I have the other monitors available to view other windows. So I still don't have any one window take up the whole desktop. But that's just my preference.