Improving appearance of text on new 17" LCD display

My girlfriend, a professional writer, just bought herself a new LG 17" LCD monitor. She'd previously been using a 15" Dell LCD which she liked, but as I built her a new computer a couple of months back she recently decided she'd like to try a new larger LCD monitor with the new system:

DFI Infinity Ultra II-M2 (socket AM2), AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ cpu, 1 GB dual channel DDR2 RAM, Sapphire Radeon X550 graphics with 256 megs onboard (cheap graphics card, but she doesn't game on this machine -- would a more expensive graphics card improve the appearance of text on the 17" LCD monitor?). Can post other specs if needed.

We found that when displaying text documents in, for example, MS Word (which is what she uses when working on a manuscript) that the text initially was rather thin and jagged looking on the 17" display and much less attractive compared to how it looked on her older 15" LCD monitor. As I'm still using CRT monitors on my own systems I'm not very familiar with LCD's. I know, of course, that LCD's have a specific "native resolution" setting at which they should look their best and we have set the new LG monitor to that resolution -- 1280x1024.

Among the built-in features of this monitor is a "text" setting on one of the monitor menus supposed to improve the appearance of text, but any improvement in the appearance of MS Word text is minimal using this setting.

Given the wide acceptance and use of 17" and even larger LCD monitors we were both surprised to find that the display of text in a widely used program like MS Word is noticeably worse on the 17" screen. We've turned on larger fonts on the desktop, which helps with desktop icon labels and drop down menus in windows, and turned on the "Text" setting built into the monitor menu (and also tried tweaking the "clock" and "focus" settings in the monitor menus), and we also selected the "Cleartype" method of smoothing fonts, which also seems to help the appearance of text in MS Word.

In addition she changed to a new font with a somewhat darker and thicker appearance and increased the font size. All these changes have made the new monitor more acceptable for use when editing text in MS Word but we're wondering if we've missed anything? Are there other settings/options we've overlooked that might make the appearance of text more attractive on the new 17" LCD monitor?

We've tried running at lower than "native resolution" -- e.g. 800x600, which is what she uses on the old 15" Dell LCD -- but that also looks rather angular/spikey and unattractive (not surprising given that's not the larger LCD's native resolution.)

Are there any other people here who use MS Word with larger LCD's that might have some suggestions for improving the appearance of text when working on a manuscript for "hard copy" publication (i.e. a book) in MS Word? I'm especially curious about what people do when editing text on even larger monitors, as 21 to 24 inch LCD's seem to be rather widely used. Or do people who have to edit text really prefer smaller monitors and have dual monitor setups with a second smaller monitor they use for text editing?

I'd like to be clear that we don't think anything is defective. We've installed the driver for the new monitor and checked in the hardware manager to see that the system is actually using the new driver. Furthermore, MS Word text is legible and readable, just not as attractive as on the older smaller LCD monitor -- though we're getting close after making the changes I mentioned above.

She likes the fact that at the higher resolution she doesn't have to scroll around as much when viewing web pages and is otherwise quite satisfied with the new monitor. But as over 50% of her time on the computer is spent writing and editing text, the appearance of text on the monitor is of primary importance to her so we'd like to be sure we've done everything reasonably possible to improve the appearance of MS Word text.

We'll also likely buy a cable for the DVI hookup as the monitor only came with an analog cable, but I'm betting that will only produce a small improvement at best.

Is there anything else we should try that might improve the appearance of text on a 17" LCD, especially when working in MS Word?

 

Ya, I bought a DVI cable and noticed no difference between them on my 19" LG widescreen. AFAIC, it was a waste of money for the type of computing I do, such as no gaming or other types of graphical applications.

 

Get a copy of ClearTweak (free) online. I think you'll be impressed with it.

 

Thanks you both for your responses and info. I did a web search and found some other helpful ideas for our LCD text problems:

1) Right click on desktop/Settings/Advanced button and select 120 dpi instead of the default 96 dpi improves the appearance of text, making larger text appear less angular and jagged. There is also a custom option available there that lets you select your own dpi number/setting.

2) I found that the MSN browser, IE 7, and Firefox all have settings or controls to enlarge the browser text (and pretty easy to use, but I'd never needed to look for such options before). Firefox is the most flexible of the three browsers I listed as you can adjust the text size with your mouse wheel if you hold down the Control key. No doubt that won't work on every website, but given the popularity of larger LCD screens I'm betting it will work on most.

Hope this info may help others who've only just made the leap to a larger LCD screen.

Thanks again for the responses and help.