display issue?

[md2020]

I just received a new T42p (2373-GVU) with 14.1" SXGA+ (1400x1050) screen. At the 1400 resolution, everything is clear, just a little hard to read cause it's so small. My issue is when I change the resolution to 1280 or below, the text becomes blurry. It's weird because not every line is blurry, it seems to be every other line or every 2 lines. The rest of the lines are clear. I haven't noticed any blurry images though, just blurry text.

I spoke to IBM support about this issue and the guy mentioned that this is an issue with just about every LCD screen if you don't use the recommended resolution setting. He went on to explain that the newer LCD's coming out automatically correct this problem.

I also spoke to another IBM tech and he said that there may be a problem with my LCD.

Does anyone know if this is a universal issue with the LCDs that are in the market or do you think this may be a problem with only my LCD?

[Chun-Yu]

Yes, it's true that this is a universal problem with LCDs - always try to run them at their native resolutions. 1280x1024 is especially bad because the aspect ratio is different, so you get some even weirder stretching.

[Greg Gebhardt]

It's a common problem. LCD screens work best in their native resolution. There are work arounds, but basically you need to make the text larger.

[Greg Gebhardt]

Also on most programs if you press the CTRL button and move the scroll wheel back and forth, it will increase and decrease the text font size on the screen.

[sktn77a]

It's weird because not every line is blurry, it seems to be every other line or every 2 lines. The rest of the lines are clear.

Actually, that's a little strange - all of the text should be equall blurry! But to help the problem with blurry text at non-native resolutions of LCDs you can switch on ClearType - it's like anti-aliasing for text.

[siut]

I just received a new T42p (2373-GVU) with 14.1" SXGA+ (1400x1050) screen. At the 1400 resolution, everything is clear, just a little hard to read cause it's so small. My issue is when I change the resolution to 1280 or below, the text becomes blurry.

This is normal for LCD's. But you can set the screen at 1400x1050 resolution, and change the DPI setting (from 96 to 120) to enlarge everything you have on the screen. This will give you the best sharpness and you can control the size of objects on your screen (not just the text size, but everything will be scaled together).

[mdarnton]

It's weird because not every line is blurry, it seems to be every other line or every 2 lines. The rest of the lines are clear.

Actually, that's a little strange - all of the text should be equall blurry! But to help the problem with blurry text at non-native resolutions of LCDs you can switch on ClearType - it's like anti-aliasing for text.

Imagine trying [warning: cultrural reference ahead] to not step on the sidewalk cracks so as not to break your mother's back. You're going to be able to step on two or three sidewalk sections naturally without shifting your gait, and those are the sharp ones. Then you have to start walking funny, making unsharp lines. Then a couple of normal steps, then some weird ones.
That's how interpolation works.

http://www.dtp-aus.com/interpol.htm

[md2020]

Thanks everyone, this was really informative. I actually have a Toshiba laptop with native resolution 1024x768, and when I changed the resolution, I never experienced any problems. But I guess the IBM, having native resolution at 1400x1050, has a different ratio that doesn't convert well to 1280 or 1024. Well, it's good to know my laptop doesn't have a defect and that I don't have to return it.

Also, I tried changing the setting to ClearType, but not much improvement. I'll just have to stick with the 1400 resolution and just change the font and dpi settings to make things readable.

[Conmee]

1280x1024 (SXGA) looks bad on all the LCDs I've seen with aspect ratios of 4:3 (pretty much the rest of the resolution world). In fact, 1400x1050 SHOULD be the middle-ground standard between XGA and UXGA, since SXGA+ is a 4:3 aspect ratio, just like XGA and UXGA. On the other hand, sXGA (1280x1024) is 5:4 aspect ratio?!?!? Particularly on the 15" UXGA Flexview screens, XGA scales very well, and not as blurry/fuzzy as XGA on SXGA+ (mainly due to the higher native resolution). At any rate, even XGA on my 14" T42p doesn't look that bad.

Daniel.

P.S. I turn off ClearType completely, and the text looks fine at 1024x768, for the most part.

[Moroner]

Turning on Cleartype without using the native resolution will probably make your image worse than using standard antialiasing. This is because Cleartype makes use of the geometry of the read, green and blue subpixels, and the resulting text looks quite odd and worse than normal antialiased text when magnified. I doubt that the scaling technology used by ATI can deal with that.
Since you tried 1280 and not 1024, I believe the text is only a bit too small for you. You can get a huge improvement in readability be turning on Cleartype (in Display Properties, Appearance, Effects), which, see above, only helps in native resolution.
If you want to use Internet Explorer with 120dpi, adding the DWORD key UseHR with value 0x1 to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main in the registry will cause IE to scale your web pages as well. (Requires IE 6, I believe)