getting things on screen readable

[Guest]

Hi some of the newer laptops office has been getting in, the fonts and icons
and things in general are so small as to be hard to read. Changing the
resolution gives a fuzzy look to everything. We've tried playing around with
font and icon size, but have not found a good balance, and still some
applications need tweaking individually. And sometime closing the app reset
things. Windows XPP.
Does anyone have a good write up of what, where and how to change to make
these newer screens usable, especially for slightly older workers who no
longer have eagle eyed vision.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Hi some of the newer laptops office has been getting in, the fonts
and icons and things in general are so small as to be hard to read.
Changing the resolution gives a fuzzy look to everything. We've
tried playing around with font and icon size, but have not found a
good balance, and still some applications need tweaking
individually. And sometime closing the app reset things. Windows
XPP.
Does anyone have a good write up of what, where and how to change
to make these newer screens usable, especially for slightly older
workers who no longer have eagle eyed vision.

Change the DPI to 120, the fonts and icons to extra large (you might try the
ClearType Tuner - This PowerToy lets you use ClearType technology to make it
easier to read text on your screen, and installs in the Control Panel for
easy access.)

Otherwise you get them a 24" monitor, connect it to the laptop at their desk
(possibly one for home) and hope for the best.

LCD monitors have a 'native' resolution and are optimized for that
resolution. Using any other resolution on it would be a compromise of
quality and thus either pictures will look fuzzy, text will be difficult to
read, etc. Even the 120dpi will have the side effect of fuzzy pictures.
You can fiddle and tweak all you want - but outside of the native
resolution, thing *will be* fuzzy. One solutioin is to purchase a laptop
with a large enough screen to help make up for it - which of course means
heavier, etc. There's trade-offs that have to be made in this situation.
Either everything will be larger and you will have to change the fonts in
some applications individually (office apps, etc) and pictures will be a bit
fuzzy or the laptop will be larger and heavier or they will be using an
external screen most of the time, etc.

 

[Leonard Grey]

LCD displays have a native resolution at which they are designed to be
operated. Check the user guides that shipped with the laptops to find
out the native resolution for each laptop. If an LCD display is operated
at anything other than its native resolution, images and text will look
fuzzy.

If your users have not been fiddling with the controls, particularly for
resolution, DPI (default is 96) or ClearType (on by default), the image
on the display is the way it should be. If that appears too small for
some, Windows ships with Accessibility tools (in the Start Menu under
Accessories) that may help. Personally, I use reading glasses.