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1600 x 1050 displays but large text?

post #1 of 7
7/17/07 at 1:30am
Thread Starter 
I really don't like tiny text. At work I have a Dell 2407W monitor that has 1920 x 1200 which if I didn't do anything to the standard settings of everything would make text way too small and cause me a lot of eye strain and leaning into the monitor.

So in the display control panel under advanced settings I change the DPI to 120, I run Clear Type, and in each application I make sure to set it up for larger fonts by default if possible.

As I consider which notebook to buy I wonder whether I want to buy one with the highest amount of pixels or the lowest? I know that fonts generally look better when the display settings are set to be exactly the native settings of the display resolution, but is there any logic that when you are controlling the display size with the other things like DPI and using Clear Type that you might get better large text with a higher res monitor? I would think there might be more pixels for the Clear Type to do it's anti-aliasing thing (I assume that is it what it is doing).

Or should I save money not selecting the hi res display options when configuring a machine, if I intend to set the computer for big fonts anyway?
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post #2 of 7
7/17/07 at 3:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter_S View Post
I really don't like tiny text. At work I have a Dell 2407W monitor that has 1920 x 1200 which if I didn't do anything to the standard settings of everything would make text way too small and cause me a lot of eye strain and leaning into the monitor.

So in the display control panel under advanced settings I change the DPI to 120, I run Clear Type, and in each application I make sure to set it up for larger fonts by default if possible.

As I consider which notebook to buy I wonder whether I want to buy one with the highest amount of pixels or the lowest? I know that fonts generally look better when the display settings are set to be exactly the native settings of the display resolution, but is there any logic that when you are controlling the display size with the other things like DPI and using Clear Type that you might get better large text with a higher res monitor? I would think there might be more pixels for the Clear Type to do it's anti-aliasing thing (I assume that is it what it is doing).

Or should I save money not selecting the hi res display options when configuring a machine, if I intend to set the computer for big fonts anyway?
it depends on your other uses. If you take a lot of digital photos, or do any kind of image editing, more pixels will give you a much better and more detailed view of them. Also, high definition videos require a higher pixel screen to view. However, video games play better at lower resolutions and standard DVDs will look much bigger at native res on a screen with less pixels.
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post #3 of 7
7/17/07 at 10:54pm
I'd opt to go for one with a greater number of pixels. There are programs out there or even the Windows settings you mentioned that can enlarge text, and sacrificing the quality of your picture to do so seems ludicrous.
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post #4 of 7
7/18/07 at 12:35am
Thread Starter 
Seems like two different opinions and more reading and learning for me.
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post #5 of 7
7/18/07 at 1:48am
The quality of your picture depends on the source. Yeah sure video games (and other things) look nice in higher resolutions if your card can render high pixel counts well, but the higher resolution makes standard dvd watching a little poor.
If you dont think you need the desktop real estate, then I'd recommend the monitor with the smaller pixel count. No reason to add to your eye strain.
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post #6 of 7
7/20/07 at 2:27am
Thread Starter 
Today at work on my Dell 2407W that is 1920 x 1200 I changed the DPI setting from the already larger than default of 120, which is 125% to a custom setting of 150% and after it reboot (XP and nvidia 8800) it came up with pretty large text. The text was too large actually, because I was losing even more screen real estate, so I went back to 125%, but it looked crisp and with Clear Type on I didn't see any weird font mangling.

Aren't fonts going to look better on a higher pixel count screen even if the screen is running in a non native resolution? If the answer is yes then the small premium that the 1620x1050 costs is probably worth it.
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post #7 of 7
7/20/07 at 3:44am
Thread Starter 
Oh, one more thing: Does a hi res screen draw more power than a low res screen given the same brightness output? I don't need long battery life as most of the time I will be using the unit plugged into the wall, but I'm curious how this works.
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