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Activate Clear Type in Windows XP/2003
Windows XP includes an advanced font rendering engine that radically improves the appearance of the fonts in your operating system.
This new font rendering engine is specifically designed to improve the appearance of fonts on LCD screens. If you are using an old CRT monitor you will still notice modest improvement but the real gain is with LCD monitors.
Clear Type manipulates the red, green and blue sub-pixels used to create the fonts on your screen. This makes fonts easier to read for the human eye. Shadows are eliminated and the result is that your eyes can look at an LCD screen longer and with less effort.
Enable or disable Clear Type
Enabling or disabling Clear Type can be easily done with a few mouse clicks. Simply right-click on an empty spot on your Desktop and choose the option Properties as shown in Figure 1.
Continue by choosing the Appearence tab and the Effects button as show in Figure 2.
You must now be confronted with the dialog in Figure 3.
If it is not already checked, check the box next to the option Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts, choose the option Clear Type and then dismiss the dialog by clicking on OK.
Clear Type must now be enabled. You can disable Clear Type by using the reverse procedure of what is described above.
It is very important to auto-calibrate your monitor after you have enabled Clear Type since the monitor will automatically choose the default best options. You can afterwards configure the monitor to the new situation.
See the difference
To see the difference between Clear Type and the standard font rendering engine in Windows XP/2003, compare the images in Figure 4 and Figure 5 where Clear Type is disabled or enabled respectively.
Appearance is clearly a matter of taste as much as anything else but, unquestionably, Clear Type is beneficial to people who must use an LCD monitor over long periods of time.
Clear Type is the new standard
Windows Vista will be set to use the Clear Type font rendering engine by default. I must say that I really love Clear Type. Once you get used to it there is no other way you can use your monitor. It is clear, goes easier on your eyes and simply looks better.
I love Clear Type for one more reason however: now Windows users can finally enjoy some advanced screen display as the Mac OS X users have been doing for a long time.