blurry text: nothing seems to help

[Wolborg]

I am struggling with the widely discussed problem of blurry text in Windows 8.1. I have made countless adjustments to monitor settings, display settings, video card settings, ClearType settings, color schemes, altered FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA registry value, used various calibration programs, enabled and disabled ClearType, enabled and disabled that high DPI thing, and re-checked several times that all the relevant drivers are up to date. It's all useless. Working with Windows 8.1 is still sheer murder on the eyes.

I would have certainly begun to question my eyesight or possibly even sanity, if it wasn't for the fact that I have two computers turned on simultaneously, one with Windows XP and one with Windows 8.1. I am using one monitor, unplugging it from one computer and plugging it into the other whenever I want to switch from one computer to another. I am looking at the exact same document with the exact same version of Word, and under Windows XP the text is comfortable to read and I can write for hours without problems, and under Windows 8.1 I feel my eyes getting tired within minutes.

It must have something to do with the way fonts are displayed under Windows 8.1. Look at the font Times, for instance. Under Windows 8.1, the comma looks just a little more than the period, and the period looks just a little more than nothing. Under Windows XP, the period looks like a proper period and the comma looks like a proper comma.

The difference is even more striking with Total Commander (file explorer software, a Windows Explorer substitute). Under Windows 8.1 I went as far as increasing the font size, but the text is still so blurry that the letters are difficult to tell apart unless I get closer to the screen.

Any chance you could suggest anything I haven't tried yet that could help? I am close to uninstalling Windows 8.1 and installing Windows 7. Never mind the software support. My eyesight is much more important than possible security risks.

 

[MilesAhead]

I have a Toshiba Laptop with Windows 8.0 and AMD cpu/gpu. I tried all the stuff you mentioned. In Firefox I use Theme Font and Size Changer to make menus readable. But what has helped me the most, at least in browsers and editors is using ComicSans font for everything. It just seems the easiest to read out of all the fonts, Color Toggle addons and everything else I have tried. If you search you should be able to find it for free legally someplace.

The downside is it is not always easy to see the difference between regular and bold. But that is still better than squinting.

 

[Wolborg]

Thanks.

 

[TechnoMage]

I bought a little Acer One Netbook with my Obama Stimulus Check. It's the ONLY store bought computer I've ever bought and owned.

Well it came with Windows XP Home on it and I wanted to upgrade it to Windows 7. So I backed up the XP and installed W-7. That all went OK, but the video was pure crap. There were no W-7 video drivers for that little Netbook, so I applied the only fix that I knew would work.....

I restored my backup of Windows XP and that solved the problem of the nasty looking video.
Later, I even tried Windows 8.1, but with very similar results....so once again I had to go back to XP. I'm happy now, to just leave that little PC running XP. I works just fine.

Cheers mates!
TechnoMage