Laptop resolution - just not adding up!

defenstration

I've a Dell Inspiron 9400. The number of pixels is 1440x900 and when I set the resolution to just that, all is fine. Thing is though, that resolution has everything a bit too small, so I tried reducing the resolution a bit to solve the problem.

Doing the maths, 1440:900 would have the same ratio as 1280:700, so I set the resolution to 1280x700, expecting everything to be ok, but the text is blurred and the picture in general is of much poorer quality. I doubt this is simply due to the fact that the text and images seem larger, because I never had this problem on my desktop.

So I'm just wondering is there any way of setting up my resolution to a lower setting, but with a decent picture?

I tried fooling around with the Windows font sizes and the DPI settings (while leaving the resolution at 1440x900), and while that made some of the text bigger, it did not do so for all of them, and the images and icons were a bit distorted also.

jimmycrackcorm

In all seriousness, I'd suggest you visit an optician! Reducing the resolution doesn't have the same effect because your lcd still has the same number of pixels. All you are doing is trying to spread uneven blobs of colour over the same number of pixels. I'd bet that your desktop is different because either you have a CRT which works differently.

Make sure you are using Cleartype as it has a dramatic effect.

Owen

Jimmy's kinda correct. LCD's run at a native resolution, and when you try to have a desktop with a smaller screen res, but with the same physical size, the monitor/graphics card scales things up at an uneven ratio to fill the gap, hence blurring.