Fonts Slightly Blurry?

[consultant]

I installed Win7, clean install on my Pavillion notebook with a NVidio GEForce Go 7400 display adapter. Everything looked very good. I installed the Windows update for the driver. Didn't seem to make a difference. On XP I had the DPI setting at 125% as I prefer larger fonts. I didn't like it on Win7 for some reason. Things a little too big, so I went back to small. I did the ClearType Tuner. I also messed around with refresh rates for my monitor going from 60hz to 70hz. Didn't seem to make a difference, but 75hz things were noticeably more fuzzy. So I'm back to small (normal) fonts, 60hz, did the ClearType Tune, made sure Smooth fonts was on in the performance, etc. Now maybe I'm imagining things but I swear things are not nearly as crisp as before. It looks like maybe there is too much contrast and/or brightness but things look a slightly fuzzier now. Any suggestions?

 

[harpua]

You could try right clicking the desktop, going into Nvidia Control Panel (which should be on that right click menu), and playing around with "adjust desktop color settings" from the menu that should appear on the left. In that section, you will see sliders to adjust contrast, brightness, gamma, etc. These can make a difference.

Also text size can be more finely adjusted in Windows advanced appearance settings.
To do that, you need to: right click the desktop, click personalize, click "windows color," then "advanced appearance settings," then under "item" you can check the various items and some of those like "menu" will have font settings which you can adjust the size of, in very fine increments and adjusting text size that way looks clearer to me than doing the global DPI adjustment, and might help some in your case.

Also make sure your color resolution is set on the highest setting. It should be by default.

Finally go to the manufacturer's site for your computer manufacturer and also for the graphics adapter, in this case, nvidia and see if either of them offer a more recent driver for your particular graphics card and OS. If so you can try installing either or both of those and see if any of them improve things.

 

[consultant]

I think I may know the problem. Resolution is set at 1024x1768. But my Envision EN7220 LCD, I believe the naitive resolution is 1280x1024 but there is no option for that resolution. Also when I was running XP it would show two monitors, one for the EN7220 and one for the notebook's built-in LCD. Not here.

Wait.. I just opened my notebook (it is docked) then closed it and Windows went to standby. Then I opened my notebook, it turned on, and now my external monitor is in 1280x1024! Back to normal, yeh! But now I want to go to 125% DPI. It is if when I changed to 125% and rebooted, all of the sudden it thought the monitor was only 1024x768. It is as if it was using the notebook LCD settings for the external?!

I went into display settings and the display is now correctly identified as EN7220.

Only thing I hate about 125 DPI is on some websites the forms/menus are designed in such a way the developer only tested on 100 DPI and sometimes things overlap.

 

[harpua]

Sounds like you got it sorted. You can try fine tuning and adjusting (some) text size the way I suggested above and see if that works better for you than the global DPI adjustment. It might, it might not.

If you are using two monitors, sometimes you may find it useful to hit the windows key + p which brings up a shortcut to select which one (or both) you want to use.

 

[nate42nd]

I think I may know the problem. Resolution is set at 1024x1768. But my Envision EN7220 LCD, I believe the naitive resolution is 1280x1024 but there is no option for that resolution. Also when I was running XP it would show two monitors, one for the EN7220 and one for the notebook's built-in LCD. Not here.

Wait.. I just opened my notebook (it is docked) then closed it and Windows went to standby. Then I opened my notebook, it turned on, and now my external monitor is in 1280x1024! Back to normal, yeh! But now I want to go to 125% DPI. It is if when I changed to 125% and rebooted, all of the sudden it thought the monitor was only 1024x768. It is as if it was using the notebook LCD settings for the external?!

I went into display settings and the display is now correctly identified as EN7220.

Only thing I hate about 125 DPI is on some websites the forms/menus are designed in such a way the developer only tested on 100 DPI and sometimes things overlap.

I just installed Windows 7 on my moms machine. Her monitor is also 1024X768 and I noticed the same thing. Go to "adjust clear type text" and it will help but it's still a little blurry.

 

[Jacee]

Nate, click on 'clear type tunner' and adjust from there.

 

[nate42nd]

Nate, click on 'clear type tunner' and adjust from there.

Thanks Jacee, I was trying to tell to OP to do just that. It helped my mom's out, but hers is still a little blurry. I think it may be her monitor. I think it's one of the 1st flat panel monitors ever made. She probably paid a fortune for it and does not want to give it up. haha

Thanks again.

Jacee, what do you think of MSE? any good? It seems to be getting good reviews. I have the .exe sitting here ready to try it out. No virus protection at the moment. Guess it's better than nothing huh?

 

[Jacee]

Yes, I'm using it on one of my computers.

 

[harpua]

It's definitely better than nothing.

It's funny, I resisted getting an external display for my laptop for many years and recently with prices so attractive at my local Costco, broke down and took home a 1920 x1080 24" Viewsonic LCD and it is just awesome, especially for photos, games and movies (especially with good headphones). I can't believe this level of quality is available for a mere $200. On the one hand, I'm glad I waited because it was great quality for a very reasonable price, on the other, I'm sorry I went without a nice external display for so long.