Font on screen blurry

Lately I've been noticing that the font on our monitor has been rather blurry. Anyways, what would the settings for adjusting the font be? I'm not talking about Times New Roman, etc., but finding a way to avoid blurred letters. The difference is very very noticeable when I come home from work, having used computers at work for the last several hours. It doesn't seem to be affecting pictures at all, so I'm thinking that it is simply a setting somewhere that affects fonts and their displays.

 

Try adjusting the spectacles setting...

 

Hi Paul,

Went thru display settings in this thread http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=54685 Try adjusting the DPI and the refresh rates up.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks. I'll try these steps when I get home.

 

OK I changed the settings for the screen resolution and refresh rate, but so far it looks pretty much just as bad.

I ran the dxdiag, and it found nothing wrong at all. I saved the information and I can post it/link to it, if desired. I have the latest version of DirectX (9.0c).

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, if I have to, I can always just buy an LCD.... but I really was hoping to get another couple of years outta my monitor here.

 

Can you try another monitor (bring your's home from work)? You may spend hours trying to adjust settings only to find the monitor is making it blurry.

The other day I did a fresh install of XP and before installing the motherboard/chipset drivers and graphics drivers I could only run at low resolution because the higher resolutions were blurry. Update the drivers if the problem is in Windows. Find the webpage of the monitor's model and check if there are specific drivers for it.

A monitor at work I was using was giving me headaches because it was drifting into and out of focus.

If it is a "normal" focus problem it may not be hard to have repaired. There is usually a focus adjustment that can be made by a repairer. The focus was out on a monitor of mine, I had it fixed. I use it for reading on the 'net because it has the sharpest focus of all my monitors. It is a 1996 model .

Matt

 

Hi Paul,

An LCD has to be very good, read pricy, to match a CRT when used for text reading or viewing pictures.

I spend about 8 hours a day reading text and use a 5 year old Sony flat
screen Trinitron monitor.

Moving this to the Hardware section.

Regards - Charles

 

Since pics seem Ok n problem is just with font.
Have you tried changing the font type to a true type font? That might match your screen resolution a bit better.

Doesn't seem like a hardware issue if pic displays are good.
For hardware- give us your monitor type n to save time do you know the dot pitch of monitor?
What resolution are you using?

 

Matt, I went to Sony's site (btw--my monitor is a 200ES Trinitron, which I bought in 1999). I d/l their driver and Windows says that it is the same one that is already installed.

 

Ephemarial, its a Sony Trinitron 200ES. Not too sure what you mean by dot pitch-its 800x600, or 96 dpi.

Now I do know what True Type fonts are, but I couldn't see how to change the monitor settings to this. Firefox didn't show this option.

 

Hi Paul,

You didn't mention it, but did you per Pete's post follow the Clear Type reference?

Regards - Charles

 

Dot pitch is distance between pixels on screen. All monitors give it; most are .28mm to .32 mm.
Looked up yours – it’s .25mm. VERY good monitor n things should be crystal clear.

A True Type font is scaled according to monitor resolution.
When selecting a true type font it might have TT in front of name.

800x600 is rather low resolution.

Things are larger there. Many programs require 1024x768. Might want to look at that n change. But that’s not your problem. Things should be as clear at 800 as a higher setting.

To explore n change resolution:
Right click on blank space on desktop.
Left click on properties.
Left click on settings – that’s where can change resolution (guess you know that).

But first: fom Windows help.

To use ClearType for screen fonts
Open Display in Control Panel.
1. On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
2. In the Effects dialog box, select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box.
3. Click ClearType in the list.

Notes
To open Display, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Display.

ClearType is ideal for portable computer and other flat screen monitors.

ClearType may appear slightly blurry on desktop computer monitors.

Whether you select Standard or ClearType from the list, you must have a video card and monitor that support a color setting of at least 256 colors.

Best results are achieved with High color (24-bit) or Highest color (32-bit) support. Click the Settings tab to set Color quality
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Try both standard n clear type settings on your monitor. Play with it n let’s see what happens.

 

Tell you the truth, Charles, I had forgotten all about it in the midst of these posts. I just turned in on and have seen a definite improvement. Now my reaction is, that its strange that I'd never heard of Clear Type before. Is mine the only monitor that has gotten progressively blurry over the years? Maybe folks are buying new systems so often, that they never notice this. Anyways... thanks for teh suggestion. Like I siad, after reading your post I went back and turned it on. Definite improvement.

 

OK Ephemeral, after reading my post to Charles, you can see that I got Clear Type running and it has improved the blurriness considerably--I don't recall seeing it this clear before. Well looks like MS named this product accurately.

 

Well folks a big hearty thank you to all who participated in this thread. I really don't know why I haven't tried to fix this before--perhaps its just gotten bad bit by bit, so like the proverbial frog in the heated water, it just got used to it. Anyways, things are back to normal again.