Question : "Fuzzy" image on LCD screen

I hooked up a new Compaq Presario 7895 to my LCD screens.  The fonts on web-pages are "fuzzy" or blurred.  The same blurring is very noticeable when typing AOL files, especially in bold.

The problem does occur within Quicken or MS Word or Excel.

The problem does not occur on a typical CRT monitor.

The problem does not occur in 256 color mode.  It only appears at 16-bit color or higher.

I have already tried two different LCD screens, one by panasonic and one IBM, and both have the blurring.

I have tried 4 different graphics cards, both PCI and AGP, and none have fixed the problem.  

I have also tried almost every setting imaginable, under display properties, and the only thing that resolves the image, is when I switch to 256 color mode.

I own 2 older Compaq Presarios, and neither causes this blurring on my LCDs.  They each produce a perfect crisp image.

Two years ago, I owned a Dell that gave the same blurring on these LCDs...at the time I thought I owned a dud of a computer, but now I see that this problem exists across several models.

All the computers  use Windows 98 version 2, Intel Pentium processors.

I'd be most grateful if anyone knew the answer to this problem.  One of the chief tech-support guys at Dell said he had reports of "fuzzy" images on LCDs, but did not know a fix.

Thanks for any guidance.

Answer : "Fuzzy" image on LCD screen

Could it be that you have an application that came with Windows 98 and auto-starts that turns on antialiasing (a blurring of the edges in screen fonts to make them look "smoother")?

For example, Adobe Type Manager (ATM)  which is a start-up app has an option that's turned on by default, "smooth edges of screen fonts". You can turn it off in the ATM dialog.

Check the Start-->Programs-->Adobe folder.

The thing with ATM is that its font smoothing feature doesn't work with every application, and doesn't work at 256 colors, which comes close to what you're describing.

hg