Improving Your Display with ClearType

NOTE

Microsoft says that Clear-Type is designed for LCD screens only, such as the ones in portable PCs and flat-screen monitors. Activating ClearType on a tube-type monitor might make text and other onscreen elements appear slightly blurry. Or, depending on your monitor, it might smooth out some of the roughness you typically get with some screen fonts. In other words, YMMV (your mileage may vary). The best thing to do is try it yourself, and see if you like it!

The LCD screen used on a typical laptop PC or flat-panel display looks pretty good until you get up close. That's when you notice the "jaggies," those jagged edges and ragged shapes that come part and parcel with displaying text and graphics on an LCD screen.

With Windows XP, however, Microsoft has a cure for the jaggies and it's called ClearType. With ClearType enabled, the jaggies are replaced by smooth letters and perfectly rounded edges.

As I explained in Chapter 2, "Changing the Way Windows Looks and Acts," ClearType is a new display technology that effectively triples the horizontal display resolution on LCD displays. If you're using a portable PC or flat-panel display, you'll definitely want to turn on ClearType. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

To turn on ClearType, follow these steps:

1.	From the Control Panel, click the Display icon.
2.	When the Display Properties utility opens, select the Appearance tab.
3.	Click the Effects button.
4.	When the Effects dialog box appears (as shown in Figure 21.1), check the Use the Following Method to Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts option, and select ClearType from the pull-down list. Figure 21.1. Turn on ClearType from the Effects dialog box. NOTE The Power Options available will vary depending on your exact hardware configuration. It's also possible that the manufacturer of your portable PC has included its own power management utilities. You should use these utilities either in addition to or in place of Windows XP's power management features, as they are most often tailored to your specific hardware.
5.	Click OK, then click OK again.

That's all there is to it and you'll never turn it off.