Why is my display fuzzy at 1280x900 or lower resolution

Question

Why is my display fuzzy at 1280x900 or lower resolution

I purchased a refurbished 15" MacBook Pro last week. Prior to that, I've always used a PC (desktop and laptop). Can anything tell me why my display is fuzzy when I try to increase the size of the type on my display (e.g.: set my resolution to 1280x900 or lower)? It's currently set at 1440x900 and everything is crisp, but I find it too small compared to my PC desktop screen where the resolution is set at 1024x768.

Thanks,
Karen

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.9), PC Desktop with WinXP

Posted on Mar 20, 2007 11:43 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Boece

Level 5

6,264 points

Mar 20, 2007 12:27 PM in response to karentam6600000

LCD displays, unlike CRT displays, have a native resolution, where one screen dot matches up with a dot on the display.

1440x900 is your native resolution. Anything else will cause interpolation of the image (a fancy word for blurring.)

If you need larger type, you are going to have to tell the programs and operating system to use larger type; changing screen resolution will just make things blurry.

What programs in particular are too small? Perhaps we can tell you how to increase type size in them.

For example --

for the Finder go to View > Show View Options and pick 16 point type and maybe a larger icon size.

In many programs you can increase viewing size by holding down the CTRL key and pressing the Up-Arrow key.

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Answer 2

Mar 24, 2007 3:46 PM in response to karentam6600000

Thanks so much for the feedback. I'm okay with the finder. I find it hard to read MS Office for Mac documents, especially Word. Right now, I'm setting it to view at 150% but was wondering if there was a default setting for everything. So from your description, it doesn't sound like there is.

So is this the only way in which I can increase the font size? Entourage is my email program and while I can increase the font size of each email, it's a real pain to do for each. I'd prefer it if everything was just a touch bigger. I tried looking for a way to do it in Entourage but couldn't find it. Do you know of a way?

Thanks,
Karen

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