Image Quality on High Resolution monitors

Sounds like an image compression issue in your browser.  I have an HD screen on my E1705 (1920x1200) and I don't have any of the fuzzy issues.  Are you using some sort of "internet accelerator?"  Those tend to compress the images, which speed up downloading them but kills quality.  If you're not, it may be a generic browser setting (I don't know what browser you have or where it would be).  You may also try updating your display drivers from the Dell support page.  Hope this helps!

I don't think that I am using some sort of accelerator, I just got the computer today so all the settings are what it came with. I have windows xp on the computer and am using internet explorer to access the internet.  If anyone has further suggestions with the extra information here please let me know- I'll look into trying to update the display drivers once I get up in the morning.

thanks

I also was perplexed at this as I had the same issue.  Turns out that the setting for DPI was increased so that everything wouldn't look so tiny.

If you go to Display Properties --> Settings --> Advanced, you'll see on the general tab where there's a DPI setting.  Set it to normal size (96dpi).  Everything should be back to what you're used to seeing.

So it's tradeoff, either having things really small (which can be compensated for somewhat by increasing font sizes) or pixelated icons because the images themselves were not drawn using greater than 96dpi (if that makes sense).

As a side effect, I couldn't use MLB.TV very well either because things were just out of alignment because of the increased DPI.  So I have things really small and use bigger fonts.  Hope that helps you!

So be assured, your system is well above outdated systems, it was just a setting that was causing it. :)

Thanks so much!   I tried resetting the dpi setting to 96 and it worked perfectly, it had been set to 120 and it really did start to worry me that something was seriously wrong, espically after spending so much time on the phone with people from dell and coming up with nothing.

thank you

thank you

thank you

From what I understand about LCD screens, each screen has some sort of "native" resolution that it best supports.  Since I'm fairly unfamiliar with this, I did a wiki search and found this which might help to explain it better.  When I'm not traveling, I hook up a big CRT monitor to my system that I can then adjust to various resolutions without quality loss.  LCD screens just don't work the same way.  See this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_resolution

Hi, I just got the same system w/ 1680x1050 and had already tried various dpi settings before I saw this email.  One thing that also helped is I use Opera instead of IE, which solved the issue w/ the images.  In fact, I can use the larger dpi setting and it still works.  Unfortunately I can't just use larger fonts w/ the setting because different webpages and apps display differently.  One will be fine, another will be way too tiny.  I have a different problem which is what really bothers me:

 

The ONLY resolution I can use that's not fuzzy is the 1680x1050.  Setting to any of the other provided resolutions (and there are about 6 or 8 of them), the whole screen goes fuzzy/grainy, fonts and everything.  Is this supposed to be ok?  (sarcastic question).  Why would they provide a video card that only has one useable setting?  I want to be able to run the whole thing at a somewhat lower res when I'm not working w/ a graphics program and this is unacceptable.

 

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

 

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@madrush wrote:

I also was perplexed at this as I had the same issue.  Turns out that the setting for DPI was increased so that everything wouldn't look so tiny.

 

If you go to Display Properties --> Settings --> Advanced, you'll see on the general tab where there's a DPI setting.  Set it to normal size (96dpi).  Everything should be back to what you're used to seeing.

 

So it's tradeoff, either having things really small (which can be compensated for somewhat by increasing font sizes) or pixelated icons because the images themselves were not drawn using greater than 96dpi (if that makes sense).

 

As a side effect, I couldn't use MLB.TV very well either because things were just out of alignment because of the increased DPI.  So I have things really small and use bigger fonts.  Hope that helps you!

 

So be assured, your system is well above outdated systems, it was just a setting that was causing it. :)

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I'd heard of native resolution but didn't really realize what it meant re LCD's.  I'll hook it up to one of my CRT's when I'm in my office, but I also use it in other locations.  I have the same video card on my work laptop but it's set to a lower res to start with so I never have a problem w/ it.

I'm going to call support anyway, might have them change my display to the next lower resolution (1440x900).

Thanks!