Windows 7 - Explorer "list view" wastes space in 7 vs Vista

See attached image.

In Vista, with a list view, my 1050px tall display can list 52 items vertically. In 7 it is reduced to 44, because of apparently a larger font and larger gaps in between items. All my settings are default in both cases.

This is nearly a 20% decrease in usable space. Why???

This is a problem why? To me the version in Windows 7 is a lot more pleasant to look at and read. Having whitespace and separation is not a bad thing.

Probably because Microsoft thought that "a larger font and larger gaps in between items" would be more pleasing to read, with less eyestrain for the users.

Maybe they got complaints from Vista users, then made changes...

You could also do a search of microsoft.com.
There might be more info there.

My interpretation -

Newer monitors support higher resolutions. It is no longer universally necessary to cram the items together.

Obviously it comes down to personal preference. I guess I'm wondering if there is any way to customize this.

Yes, there is (or at least may be) a way to customize this. You can try the following:

Right click on some empty space on the desktop, click personalize, select window color, advanced appearance settings, and then go through the various items like menu and message box and see which ones have fonts sizes that can be changed (made larger). I forget which one controls the size of text in windows that you are concerned with but it might be "menu" or "icon" (this one changes more stuff than just icon fonts). Anyway, by enlarging the fonts associated with the right item in that list, you should be able to cause windows to use a larger system font for those lists.

The other solution (suggested in the next post below) is to enlarge text for everything, but that is not an ideal solution, imo, unless you want to globally change everything.

Yes you can. Go to cpanel>display>set custom text size

Ken