Dell 2005FPW poor quality text

Question

I recently purchased two Dell monitors for my home use, an E193FP (free with the sytem) and an Ultrasharp 2005FPW. I have found that the text on both monitors is NOT sharp and furthermore any bold text is not sharp and has a color variation within individual words. I find the problem most obvious when viewing nytimes.com, cnn.com, etc., but the problem is clearly visible even when looking at menus within windows.

My question is: do other people find the same problems with their Dell or other brand LCDs? I use a Dell Ultrasharp 1801FP at work and none of these problems occur. Is Dell shipping second quality monitors to home users?

I’m running Windows XP SP2 on a Dell Dim. 8400 3.2Ghz with an ATI 300SE 128MB video card, I have tried the monitors with different drivers, on different computers and using different video cards, the problems persist. I have contacted Dell and they have shipped replacement monitors all of which display the same behavior.

drew-and-not-u · Answer

Assuming you haven't done so already, right click on the desktop and select properties. Then click on the appearance tab. You should see a button labled "effects" If you select that a short list of effects will appear. Make sure that for text effects (or something like that) "Cleartype" is enabled. This will make text much smoother on high resolution screens. You can also change the font DPI to make it larger under properties->settings->advanced. And of course, make sure you have the resolution set to match the native resolution of the screen.

hope this helps!

ctalia4000 · Answer

Hi 'ClearType' will improve text quality. You activate it on the internet.  http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx . The picture quality is also affected by a monitors native resolution. This information can be found with the monitor documents . Carolyn Message Edited by ctalia4000 on 06-28-2005 07:42 PM

esbiel · Answer

Thanks for the input, but I'm running each of the monitors at their native resolution and I have tried ClearType. ClearType does make a difference it helps the color uniformity, but actually degrades the sharpness of the text. I use no less than five Dell LCDs at work all without ClearType and all have signfiicantly sharper text than my home machines. Of course these range in size from 17 to 18 inch LCDs, is there that much difference in quality between the Ultrasharp 1800FPs and the 2005FPW?

SR45 · Answer

Make sure your DPI is set to 96 dpi, also found in Display Properties...This is the optimum setting

Monitors

Dell 2005FPW poor quality text

Was this post helpful?