Thinkpads Forum

I usually change the DPI setting under Display Properties to 120 dpi.

1. What exactly does this do?
2. Does it make things more blurry at the cost of making them bigger?
3. Is there an "optimal" setting for 1440x900 resolution? ex: 130 dpi or 140 dpi

1) it increases/decreases text size in windows.
2) in XP, yes, especially without cleartype enabled.   in vista, no, unless cleartype is disabled.
3) under XP the optimal is 96 DPI regardless of screen resolution.   XP is not very good with text scaling.

erik wrote:1) it increases/decreases text size in windows.
2) in XP, yes, especially without cleartype enabled.   in vista, no, unless cleartype is disabled.
3) under XP the optimal is 96 DPI regardless of screen resolution.   XP is not very good with text scaling.

Text scaling in XP is fine, but the bitmaps (icons) get all blurry. The main problem is that not all text is scaled - some applications ignore the DPI settings fully or partially, leading to text size mismatches, which generally looks bad. This is why in XP it's preferred ro leave everything at 96DPI if possible.

If you leave everything at 96 dpi, then how can you make things more readable? I basically am trying to make things larger to read in two areas:

1. Firefox
2. Microsoft Word.

These two programs are the ones I use most for reading. I guess everything else could be small and I can live with it.

Is this problem big enough to switch to Vista?

Firefox allows you to use Ctrl++ to increase text locally on any page where the default is to small.

Word allows you to display the pages at whatever zoom you want, and scales the fonts accordingly. If you set it to page width, text will looks the same size regardless of resolution.

You can leave your dpi settings to the defaults and just increase some menu items and other areas of the os in display properties unter the appearance -> advanced stuff.

DPI scaling in XP is a big headache. I currently use a 15.4" wsxga+ display (1680 x 1050) and I'm quite happy with the way I've managed to tweak the font settings to make it look somehow nice. I could upload a couple of screenshots for you if you like.

I basically don't use the 120dpi setting but rather tweak every element separatly under the same menus arni mentioned.

Vista actually does this a lot better. I did install once Vista only to check this feature out! It is the only thing that would make me want to use the bloody OS!

http://www.istartedsomething.com/200612 ... i-scaling/

Vista probably won't be better . I have the TP61P with 1400 X 900 and Vista and found several problems trying to use 120DPI --mostly in IE7: 1) not all sites repect this and are tiny despite the settings, 2) buttons and other sections of webpages are sometimes in the wrong spot or overlapping (especially with CSS pages). Using "ctrl/+" in IE7 helps read text but you still get the problem of sections overlapping, etc.

I have not had a problem with MS Word though -- you can always change the zoom level &/or font. Pages aren't constantly changing, as on the Web.

rxblitzrx wrote: Is this problem big enough to switch to Vista?

bevross wrote:Vista probably won't be better . I have the TP61P with 1400 X 900 and Vista and found several problems trying to use 120DPI --mostly in IE7: 1) not all sites repect this and are tiny despite the settings, 2) buttons and other sections of webpages are sometimes in the wrong spot or overlapping (especially with CSS pages).

Then in that case I'd say that Vista does a great job, the problem is with web pages, but that's not really Vista's fault...

Maybe you should try Opera, it has a great feature to vectorize and scale contents. The only thing is that images are scaled too, thus making them a bit more pixelated.

In Firefox, you could consider manually tweaking your font sizes too, like here:

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/6956 ... ngsub7.jpg

it doesn't work for all websites, and it's not a perfect solution. Basically, what it does, is that it establishes a minimum font size limit to be displayed. But, as I said, Opera does a hell of a better job in that domain.

I don't know if Firefox 3.0 will have that function. I certainly hope it will!

I remember once seeing a Dell WUXGA screen, and it had a nice factory software on the system tray that allows to switch between various DPI settings on the go. Very useful piece of software, i wish Lenovo could develop such a thing!

kamaleon wrote:... snip
In Firefox, you could consider manually tweaking your font sizes too, like here:

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/6956 ... ngsub7.jpg

it doesn't work for all websites,

I think it actually does work for all websites. If you uncheck the box that says "Allow websites to choose their own fonts" Then Firefox will always use your selected font to render web pages, with a minimum font size (if specified)

If you use the AddOn "NoSquint" then you can choose a default zoom level, adjust zoom (ctrl +-), and it even remembers your zoom settings for each individual website (for those pesky sites that don't do well under any amount of zoom)

interesting! I'll try that add on!

I'm definetly interested in all possible hints on dpi settings, etc, as I like to tweak this a lot.

Thanks rxblitzrx for your hint! I'm using it now, nice one!

In the meanwhile, here's a preview of Firefox 3 and its improved ability to do scaling:

http://cybernetnews.com/2007/07/30/fire ... e-scaling/

http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/ ... lingimages

Apparently not as good as Opera, but it's getting there!