17' Ultra 'sharp'? Text very blurry

Question

I just bought a new Dell sysytem with the 17' Ultrasharp monitor. The text is anything but 'sharp' however. It's blurry and shadowy.  Anyone have the same problem and/or suggestions. Note: I e-mailed Dell support 2 days ago and have yet to receive a repsonse. Thanks

Hanaroad · Answer

Thanks for the response Tom. Have done the above and the text has been improved, however now everything is smaller, web pages only covering 2/3 of the screen, etc. Is that the only option? Poor text quality/full display or better text quality/small display?

tomintx · Answer

There are a few things you need to check. First and most importantly, go to your display properties (right click in the open on your desktop and choose 'properties' from the pop up menu) and set your resolution to the optimal 1280x1024. Next perform a monitor reset from the button on the front of the monitor (when you do a reset make sure you have a full and very busy web page pulled up). If you have XP, go to your display properties, Appearance tab, click on Effects button, place check in '...smooth edges on fonts'  and and choose 'Clear Type' from the pulldown menu. Use Clear type tuner below if you wish to refine Clear Type settings to your liking.   http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm

tomintx · Answer

Yes you can, if you want, go to Properties, Settings, Advanced again, and on the general tab, enlarge the DPI setting to larger, however you may see a bit less sharpness in text when you do this. Better option  in my opinion is many applications including MS Office and your IE browser will enlarge the text (zoom) on many web pages which accomodate that. For a shortcut to doing this, hold down the Ctrl key and spin your mouse wheel. Good luck.

Hanaroad · Answer

Thanks for the reply Tom. The larger DPI setting seems to give a more readable text, at least in out opinion. However, with the higher resolution setting everthing else stills display very small (as compare to what we were used to on our old Dell system). In addition to web pages only covering 2/3 of the screen, my wife just pulled up her favorite publishing software and finds the display on everthing to be too small. So is that the bottom line with these monitors? Lousy text with larger displays or better text with small everything else? A bit disappointing if so, given it's a very expensive brand new monitor.

Anyway, thanks for your input.

Steve in rainy Seattle, wishing I was on the road to Hana...

d010 · Answer

Hi, Try this setting too:

- click RMB Properites on the background
- go to Appearance tab
- click Effects button
- play with the "Use following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" setting. (I like the "Standard" setting)

Regards!

tomintx · Answer

@d010 wrote:

Hi, Try this setting too:

- click RMB Properites on the background
- go to Appearance tab
- click Effects button
- play with the "Use following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" setting. (I like the "Standard" setting)

Regards!

reply

That would then disable Clear Type. Experience of most folks in XP is that clear type has a decided advantage in sharpness and clarity of most fonts particularly on LCD displays. I am sure there are exceptions, but few.

Scrapnut · Answer

Hi, I had a problem with my text being blurry in the middle of my screen.  I did as the guy directed on how to change to clear type & then changed the font size but had the same problem with the text being too small to read even at XLg font.  So I changed it back to the way it was before I started & now my text is no longer blurry as it was before I did all the changes.  Don't know why but it fixed my problem.  I'm by far a computer tech but maybe someone else can explain why this worked on my E173FPB flat screen monitor.

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17" Ultra "sharp"? Text very blurry

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