Thinkpads Forum

I love everything about T400s, but the screen (text readability). It is just not "inviting", you want to get away from it. I have adjusted brightness, clearType, DPI etc, reduced resolution...

I can desribe the problem as text lacking crispiness. Other observations:
- some sites/fonts look beter, usully if fonts are "thinner";
- have to tilt diplay more often to get better viewing angle;

What do *i* consider a good screen (for reading)?
- my old 14" T42 1024x768
- old 14" Thinkpad A20m 1024x768
- recent x61 Tablet 12" ~1450x1000 (higher resolution and smaller screen, albight 4x3 aspect ratio)
- and tonight I was fixing friends desktop mashine which had old DELL 19" (1024x768) - even that I liked better the T400s..

Does T400s have just poor screen? Or this is an aspect ratio curse? Or LED backlid vs TFT? I would love to make this work with T400s, but will appreciate suggestion on other thinkpads and, gasp, other brands (sony? apple?).

Thanks!

First thing is to make sure you're running it at native resolution. LCD displays shouldn't be used with anything but native. If text is too small, the DPI should be changed, not the resolution.

Yes, of course. Native resolution, but I did give a shot (futile) to reduce resolution. Then in native resolution I played with DPI, fonts etc....

dgerasim wrote:clearType...

Despite its name, "ClearType" actually makes text look less clear IMO. Turn it off and see if that helps. I always turn it off in Office, Internet Explorer, and Windows.

dgerasim wrote:Does T400s have just poor screen?

Yes it does. The vast majority of Thinkpads do.

pianowizard wrote: Despite its name, "ClearType" actually makes text look less clear IMO. Turn it off and see if that helps. I always turn it off in Office, Internet Explorer, and Windows.

ClearType totally rocks on some displays and totally blows on others. Because the sub-pixel structure varies from one LCD panel to another. The correct way is to tune it individually.
On XP download Cleartype tuner - a Microsoft PowerToy - and see what it can do for you.
On Win7 it's built into display properties.

IMHO, cleartype is most usefull when used on a LCD running at non-native resolution. I find that when I am running a LCD at native resolution, it is substantially sharper and less irritating to read off the screen than with Cleartype. If you are changing the resoultion, it does make a huge diffrence.

Jack