2408WFP, portrait mode, blurry text

When rotated into portrait mode, are the cables being slightly pulled from their sockets either on the monitor or the PC end?

Thanks for the reply Chris,

No, i thought about this myself and double checked that the cords didn`t pull out from monitor/PC so that should not be the problem.

Any other suggestions or anyone else experiencing this?

I googled this and found out that several others also have this problem when rotating the monitor to portrait mode. Question remains, is there any fix for this?

The modes are dependent on the video card and video card driver, not the monitor. Have you tried loading a different video card driver?

Your problem could be related to ClearType and there's an easy solution.

Windows uses a technique called subpixel rendering to make text look better. You can read about that here. The problem is that ClearType expects the subpixels to be arranged in the order red, green, blue from left to right, which is the case on most monitors, including yours. However, when you rotate the monitor, the order is now red, green, blue from top to bottom. It would be very simple for Windows to take this into account when you switch to portrait mode, but I am not sure if this is the case.

To fix it try these steps:

1. Open the start menu and search for cleartype
2. When 'Adjust ClearType text' appears, click it
3. Make sure 'Turn on ClearType' is selected, then follow the prompts, choosing the text that looks best

Hopefully this will fix the issue you are having.

Thank you for the reply MUDKIP1337,

I tried your solution but unfortunately it didn`t help. The text still is very blurry even after adjusting the cleartype settings. I have two of these 2408WFP monitors right now, one showing in landscape mode and the other in portrait mode and the difference is like day and night between them.

As previously suggested by ChrisM about changing the video card driver i haven't done that because i have not found any other drivers to my card, there is only one driver on ATI website for this specific video card.

I do understand now that this is cleartype related somehow but question is, can it even be fixed in Windows or should i try to find a solution from ATI?

I`m actually a little surprised that this is even a problem because i assume many are using their Dell monitors in the portrait mode but no official fix to the problem apparently.

Does the problem disappear completely when the monitor is used in landscape mode? If this is the case, it is unlikely that there is a problem with the monitor or video card. I also doubt that any problems with the video card driver would only affect one monitor, so that is probably not worth pursuing for now.

What type of connection are you using for the monitor? VGA could cause this but DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort would not.

Is the resolution in portrait mode set to 1200x1920?

This will help me with diagnosing the problem:

1. Take a screenshot of some text in Word or WordPad on the portrait mode monitor. (Alt+Prt Scr captures the selected window; paste it into Paint and save it as a PNG.)

2. Next, move Word to the landscape monitor and open the screenshot next to it so that both are visible on the landscape monitor.

3. Take a screenshot of your entire desktop (just Prt Scr), save it as a PNG, and upload it somewhere so that I can view it.

Hi mudkip,

Yes, the problem disappear completely when the monitor is used in the landscape mode and is only visible when shown in portrait mode.

The connection is via display port & the resolution is set to 1200x1920 which is also suggested by Windows in the monitor settings.

I did what you told me and made a screenshot of a wordpad showing some text both shown in landscape & portrait. You can see them here:

landscape: http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n378/neoaoxp/landscapemode.png

portrait: http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n378/neoaoxp/portraitmode.png

I also did a side by side screenshot like you suggested but there strange thing is that the differences almost disappear on this screenshot, they almost look identical on the side by side comparison but when you look at them one by one the you clearly tell the differences.

Here`s the side by side shot: http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n378/neoaoxp/sidebyside_desktop.png

I did some research. Apparently ClearType doesn't support vertical subpixel layouts, even on Windows 7, which is disappointing as it would be trivial to add this feature. Unfortunately, this means that it is not possible to make use of ClearType subpixel rendering while in portrait mode.

There are a few ways you can make text look sharper in portrait mode:

• Disable subpixel rendering - ClearType has a mode that doesn't make use of subpixel rendering. In this mode, it will only use whole pixels when rendering text. Text will look identical in portrait and landscape mode. The disadvantage to this is that some people prefer the appearance of subpixel rendering. To enable this mode, select the rightmost option in step 3 of the ClearType tuner, like in the picture below.

• Disable ClearType entirely - While text rendered without ClearType doesn't look very good, it would at least be displayed correctly in portrait mode. The problem with this option is that the blurry text is probably nicer, despite being displayed incorrectly.

• Use a different operating system - The GNOME desktop fully supports subpixel rendering in portrait mode. You can download Ubuntu to try it ( http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop). Downloading and booting Ubuntu will not make any changes to your computer unless you choose to install it.
  • From the desktop, go to the System menu at the top of the screen. Choose Preferences, then Monitors. Use this to set the orientation of the display.
  • To set the font rendering, choose Appearance in the System>Preferences menu. Go to the font tab and click Details. At the bottom of the window is an option to set the subpixel order. Use RGB for landscape and VRGB for portrait. You will probably need to change this manually each time you rotate your monitor. After setting the subpixel order, you can change the other options to suit your preferences.

Obviously this will not help you if you need Windows, but if your goal is just to browse the web or perform other tasks not specific to Windows, Ubuntu will offer a way to do that while in portrait mode. I do not recommend this option if you do not have time to become familiar with a different operating system. It is possible that you will encounter hardware compatibility problems, but this is unusual.

I am unsure of whether or not Mac OS X or KDE support subpixel rendering in portrait mode.