Widescreen LCD Help :(

[Monica]

Hey everyone, I recently got a ViewSonic 19'' Widescreen LCD Monitor for my PC. Its native resolution is 1440x900 but I have to strain my eyes to read it. On a CRT monitor I use 800x600. I know that's terrible for this monitor, and I do want a better resolution then that for this baby. I tried the other resolutions and they all look messed up in one form or another. I'm wondering if there's a way to stay on this resolution but make things big enough to see without straining, but let everything still look like it's supposed to. Any ideas? Thanks. :)

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

Well, the problem with LCD's, as you've already mentioned, is that they have what's called native resolution, which means that they're built to run at a specific pixel depth in order to look their clearest, and anything else will not display as correctly. While CRT's can avoid this problem because they display light from a distance, an LCD creates a picture very close to the surface of the monitor, and has no room to stretch. There are lots of other reasons, but long story short, it's just a logistical issue resulting from different technologies.

The only thing I can advise you to do would be to either find a resolution that doesn't look too horrible, or explore the built in windows options for enlarging text and icons. Internet explorer has settings for this, and there are handicap options (or there should be) under "Accessories->Accessability" on your start menu.

[Monica]

Thanks, Raven, I can't believe it didn't occur to me to try those Large fonts in Properties>Appearence, but I did and everything looks good. :) I tried the magnifier in Windows and while it was nice, it was rather annoying lol.

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

The magnifier is annoying, I agree, and it's honestly just better to set the options so that everything is large across the board.

[Monica]

Actually I'd like to retract my last post, the larger fonts are, like, less bold, and hard to read still... Once my dad messed with the DPI on an older monitor but I didn't actually need it then so I fixed it back... Now I need it and I can't remember how he did it and I don't think he does either, does anyone else know how to get back there and make the computer think everything's bigger?

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

I'll look about in my settings and see if I can find what you're after.



EDIT: Okay, first of all, to change your DPI, should you have the option, right click on your desktop and go to properties. Then select the Settings tab, and you should see a button called Advanced. Once there, on the General tab (which I started on by default), there should be an option to change the DPI from 96 to 120 (125% magnification) or even higher if you so choose.

Second, go into Start->Programs->Accessories->Accessibility and run the Accessibility Wizard. You'll have three options, once you click Next, and you'll probably want the bottom one, so click the large, bold sentence at the bottom of the window. Hit next, and then you'll want only one of the four checkboxes selected, "Change the Font Size". "Use Magnifier" should be selected, and the program will probably already have run by now. Close it, you don't need it, and you already hate it. ;) From here, you can probably click Cancel, and select Yes when it asks you to keep the changes or not. You can go further from there if you need to, but that's as far as I've gone. Icons should be enlarged, text should be big and bold, and that's what you want, right?

Oh, and if you do the Accessibility wizard first, you probably won't need to change your DPI. Didn't seem to make much difference on my monitor once I ran the wizard. Catch me on AIM later if you want some screenshots of the differences.

[Monica]

Thanks SO much! That's exactly what I was trying to do! :) Now every piece of Text on every program is bigger (and makes 1440x900 look like 800x600) without compromizing picture quality. :D