Problem You want to make it easier to read the type on laptop screens and LCD desktop screens. Solution Using a graphical user interface Right-click on the Desktop and choose Properties Appearance Effects. The Effects dialog box appears. Check the box next to Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts. Select ClearType from the drop-down box and click OK, then click OK again. ClearType will now be enabled.  | You can use ClearType on a normal PC monitor, but it often makes the text appear blurry. Additionally, people have complained that it gives them headaches. |
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ClearType will now be turned on, but you won't be able to fine-tune the way it looks on your screen and because LCD screens are all different, you should fine-tune it. You'll have to download the free Microsoft PowerToy called the ClearType Tuning Control to improve how ClearType looks on your system. Download and install it from http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx. After it's installed, when the first screen appears, make sure the Turn on ClearType box is checked, then click Start Wizard. You'll come to a page with two different samples of text. Click the one that looks best on your system, then click Next. Now you'll come to a page that displays a block of text in six different ways. Click on the text that looks best and then click on Finish. You'll come to a final page that displays text in four different fonts. If you're satisfied with the way that the text looks, click Finish; you're done. If you want to try a different setting, click Back, and you'll come to the page that displays a block of text in six ways. Choose a different text block, click Next, and if you're satisfied, click Finish. Otherwise, keep going back to the page with six blocks of text, until you choose one that's best for your system.
From now on, if you want to fine-tune ClearType again, choose Control Panel Appearance and Themes ClearType Tuning, and the ClearType Tuning Control will run. Discussion The laptop screen can be very hard on the eyes, especially because many laptops are designed to work at very high resolutions (for example, 1400 by 1050 pixels), so characters on them can be exceedingly small. As laptop screens get larger, resolutions increase, and type gets smaller. The problem isn't confined to laptops increasingly popular LCD screens have the same problem. When you turn on ClearType, it's only available after you log on to XP. So any fonts displayed before you log on won't benefit from ClearType. If you want those pre-logon fonts to use ClearType for display, you can use the Registry to force them to display. Open the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Open the FontSmoothingType entry and change its value data to 2. (The default is 1, which means that font smoothing is enabled, but ClearType isn't. A value of 0 turns off both font smoothing and ClearType.) Exit the Registry Editor and reboot. ClearType will now be available before logon. See Also MS KB 306527, "HOW TO: Use ClearType to Enhance Screen Fonts in Windows XP," and MS KB 294847, "ClearType Does Not Work When Magnifier Is Enabled" |
