To my knowledge there is no system-wide method for increasing font sizes in all applications. In most applications, though, you can set the default font and size for that application in its preferences menu.
You can also use keyboard shortcuts to temporarily increase or decrease font sizes without going to the View menu. In Safari, the command and + key-combination increases the font size and command and - decreases it (the command key is the one with the apple and fan-shaped icons on it, located on either side of the space-bar: + is the equal sign key).
In MS Word, shift-command-> increases the font size of what is selected and shift-command-< decreases the selection size. The shortcut key-combinations are shown next to the commands in the View menus.
If you have Zoom turned on in the Universal Access preference pane in System Preferences, you can zoom in (enlarge everything on the screen) using the command-option-+ key-combination and zoom out with the same key-combination but using the - (minus) instead of the + key.
You will get used to the startup chime. It chimes after it does a brief hardware check. If you startup and don’t hear the chime, there is probably a hardware problem. I have been starting up my Macs since 1984 and never failed to hear the chime. So if you feel your Mac is reliable enough and don’t want to hear the chime (or if you don’t want the chime to disturb someone else, in addition to yourself, like in a library or near a sleeping spouse) you can try this pref-pane: <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/16425.
