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Use ClearType® to ‘clearly see’ how to make more money

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ClearType delivers improved font display quality over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing. ClearType improves readability on color LCD displays with a digital interface, such as those in laptops and high-quality flat panel displays. Readability on CRT screens can also be somewhat improved.

To make sure that text displayed within Windows® XP Mode applications looks sharp (Figure 1), you need to enable ClearType:

ClearType Fig1

Figure 1. Fonts displayed in a ClearType enabled virtual application (Right) are sharper

ClearType can be enabled in Windows XP Mode by following the below steps:

  1. Start Windows XP Mode (From the Windows 7 Start menu, click Windows Virtual PC, and then click on Windows XP Mode)
  2. On Windows XP Mode desktop click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
  3. On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
  4. Click to select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then click ClearType in the list.

Before enabling ClearType, I used to get a headache while reading emails (using Outlook® 2007 running in Windows XP Mode) from my manager, colleagues & wife. After enabling ClearType, I don’t get headaches any more, while reading emails from my manager and colleagues. Ahem!!! 

Check out Windows XP Mode RTM Build today, and let us know what you think, either via the comments section here, or sharing your feedback on the WVPC and Windows XP Mode Forum on Technet here.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Windows Virtual PC,Windows XP Mode,Application Compatibility,Windows Upgrade,VPC,VHD,VM,Virtual Machine,Virtualization,VM communication

Akash Maheshwari

Program Manager

Microsoft Virtualization Team

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @7Flavor - Ouch! can you send me more details on this issue at shreeshd@microsoft.com ?  Thanks Shreesh Dubey [MSFT]

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2009
    o_O' A n00b trick on a dev blog ? What's the point ? /me go back to the Virtual PC Guy's Blog...

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2009
    ClearType is awesome and much-needed but only for LCDs. MS took the wrong decision of shoving it down our throats by using fonts like Segoe UI and parts of the OS which can't disable ClearType which makes our heads spin using CRTs no matter how to tweak it using the ClearType tuner.

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2010
    Using VPC (Win 7 64Bit) with Integration Features Enabled seems to turn off ClearType!

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2010
    @Mark: It's not limited to x64 - I'm using Win7 Professional x86 and I see that ClearType is not working when Integration Features are enabled in Virtual PC.

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2011
    I am running a  Foxpro 2.6a  Database program   they work perfectly  under  32 bit operating systems but when I use  Windows Virtual PC in  XP mode  my screens in  Foxpro 2.6a  get cut  off for some reason losing  important  data.  Its there  but there is no way to scroll or display it.