Display for astronomers

[malachont]

sorry to interrupt the Hi-res party, but after buying the A31p with its
megamax ultra everything 1600*1200 flexview, I shamefully admit,
I find it completely unusable to my eyes and run it mostly in 800x600 or XGA resolution... on the native res its like trying to read the bible written over an egg. But on the lower resolutions, of course all the fonts are horribly jagged. tried all sorts of font sizes and after all this, I strongly suspect that an $1000 less machine from Dell or Toshiba with a much scorned low resolution LCD would have been better... (as it would at least run natively in XVGA which is much closer to the resolution I'm using now.

is there anything to be done, apart from trying to install Winxp
with its magical eye soothing LCD abilities, or give back the machine?

thanks

[hausman]

is there anything to be done, apart from trying to install Winxp with its magical eye soothing LCD abilities, or give back the machine?

WinXP's Cleartype makes a tremendous difference, especially at 1600x1200.

The challenge is going to be how to install/test it in case you then decide to return the machine. One possibility is to see if you can borrow a hard drive that fits the A31p and test on that. You can install WinXP and use it for 30 days without having to activate it.

[stgreek]

sorry to interrupt the Hi-res party, but after buying the A31p with its
megamax ultra everything 1600*1200 flexview, I shamefully admit,
I find it completely unusable to my eyes and run it mostly in 800x600 or XGA resolution... on the native res its like trying to read the bible written over an egg. But on the lower resolutions, of course all the fonts are horribly jagged. tried all sorts of font sizes and after all this, I strongly suspect that an $1000 less machine from Dell or Toshiba with a much scorned low resolution LCD would have been better... (as it would at least run natively in XVGA which is much closer to the resolution I'm using now.

is there anything to be done, apart from trying to install Winxp
with its magical eye soothing LCD abilities, or give back the machine?

thanks

If you can, use Linux. Linux has much better font scaling and the desktop looks smooth in practically all resolutions. If you have to use Windows, go for XP as Cleartype+large fonts is your only chance.

Stavros

[Deb Suran]

I had the same problem with an A21p, and ended up selling it (at quite a loss) and buying an A22m with native 1024x768 resolution. That was with Win98, don't know how hi-rez looks under XP. I now have a couple of A31 TPs, I've stuck with 15" screens and 1024x768, much easier on the eyes.

[hausman]

That was with Win98, don't know how hi-rez looks under XP.

XP Cleartype makes an enormous difference to my eyes. When I originally got the A21p (Win2k) I had no problem reading 1600x1200. Over the past 4 years I've gone to wearing reading glasses and trifocals, with the center strip intended for reading computer screens. Even so, I had to dial the A21p down to 1280x1024 in order to read the screen comfortably. Then I upgraded to WinXP Pro, enabled Cleartype and was immediately able to go back to 1600x1200.