Microsoft ClearType

I had mixed feelings about ClearType on XP - it seemed to be an addon that didn't achieve much. In Vista I didn't realise until recently that it is a default part of the OS and actually without it stuff looks weird. The system fonts seem to go bold, but making them bold/unbold doesn't make much difference.

In fact this change is the source of a number of forum posts akin to 'my fonts have gone bold, help!'. I myself spent a long time searching for a solution to this 'problem' - last time it occurred I ended up re creating my user account from scratch! I'm not sure why or how but this time it occurred to me to look up ClearType - I guess I saw it on one of the forums that discusses the issue.

I still have no idea what actually causes the change to happen but here's how to undo it:

1. Open the control panel set called Personalization (right click on the desktop > Personalization)
2. Click 'Window Color and Appearance' then 'Open classic appearance properties for more color options' which is at the bottom
3. In the new dialogue box click 'Effects'
4. In the next new dialogue box tick 'Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts' and set the drop-down to be 'ClearType'
5. Click OK on both dialogue boxes to close them, applying the changes

WinXP on netbooks

So Microsoft are again dictating to hardware manufacturers what they can and cannot use in their products if they want to have Windows XP on them. It doesn't matter if this decision is later reversed, or the story is true or not as it should never have been considered. (this goes for any company, in any market, that tries to restrict others in a similar fashion too).

The restrictions on what hardware you can use to run certain products should be purely technical ones. Just imagine if you bought a DVD or Blu-ray player only to find that it didn't work with your TV not because you needed some connector you didn't have but because it was too big! You'd be furious right?

Thankfully this situation will improved when Windows 7 gets released, but even that OS has restrictions if you use the very lowest end licence version.

The other issue here is that these limits do affect people who buy the non-Windows versions as these machines probably have the same hardware as their Windows counterparts, just a different OS installed.