Hans Spring recently replaced his old CRT with an LCD. But text is too small in the new monitor's native resolution.

While it's true that LCDs, unlike CRTs, are hard-wired to a single resolution, they can display lower resolutions by upconverting them. The result won't look as good as a monitor with a native 800x600 resolution, but it won't look bad, either.

Of course, if you pick a 4:3 resolution like 800x600 and your your monitor is widescreen, everything displayed will be horizontally stretched.

But there's a better fix. Instead of making the resolution smaller, just make the text larger:

In XP, right-click the desktop and select Properties. Click the Appearance tab. Select a font size.

Although the option in Vista is called 'Adjust font size,' it actually alters the size of text, icons, and everything else. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize. Click the Adjust font size link in the left panel to bring up the DPI Scaling dialog box. You'll find two size options there, and can click Custom DPI for more choices.

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